House Rules: Choose Em, Don't Use Em, or Abuse Em?

[Ace]

Some people play the game as purists, some tweek and house rule everything, some fall somewhere in between: Who are YOU?

I have a few house rules, usually under a page if you don't count add on stuff like new feats and spells

 

[Mark]

Re: Re: House Rules: Choose Em, Don't Use Em, or Abuse Em?

I have a few house rules, usually under a page if you don't count add on stuff like new feats and spells

I think for the purposes of this poll we'd only count the stuff people add on if they tweek or change the stuff they add on in a significant way (beyond just changing the name or something, I.E. changing "Greyhawk City Guard PrC" to "{My Homebrew Name} City Guard PrC") If you're just adding in feats and spells from published sources I wouldn't count that as house ruling something, I suppose. Sound fair?

 

[Thimble the Squit]

I put money on Free Parking!

(I liked that bit on the poll.)

I house rule all over the place, but mostly in regards to combat rules, in order to streamline my game so that I don't have to use miniatures.

For instance, a combatant is Flanked whenever she's being attacked by 3 or more opponents, regardless of placement. Attacks of Opportunity are pretty much an arbitrary decision, as and when I feel like it -- which isn't terribly justifiable except that I believe I dish them out fairly; monsters get AoO if they've got Reach and PCs get them whenever I make stupid monsters behave stupidly.

In some ways, I believe changing the rules to suit your personal style of play actually constitutes a kind of respect for the game; it's hard to explain but, in evidence, I have an entire website dedicated to my RuneQuest III house rules -- and that is actually my favourite system.

I play a lot of different game systems and each ruleset I use handles certain situations differently from its neighbour; many house rules get imposed because I happen to like an approach from one game which I feel would benefit another.

It's often reiterated that a GM, in making certain rulings, should remain consistent, or her players may lose faith in her skill of judgment. I hold that this necessary and responsible consistency of adjudication should not be limited to a single system of rules; if I believe that violence is wrong when I am in the UK, why would I change my mind if I happen to be in France? (Well, maybe because they're French -- but that's just me...)

 

[Uruush]

Putting money on free parking makes what is probably the worst boardgame of all time an even longer, more excruciating experience. (I hate Monopoly)

 

[Azlan]

mind you, a lot of third-party material goes into my games, which is basically published "house rules" anyways.

Third-party material is exactly that: published "house rules".

I notice that players who are normally averse to house rules don't seem to notice or mind that they, themselves, are advocating house rules when they try bringing on board various third-party publications that appeal to their own playing needs or style. Go into any game store and you will see a glut of published "d20 house rules", from which you can pick, a la carte.

If it's published, it's considered to be justifiable, i.e. more credible and worthwhile; which is a mindset of the public that goes back all the way to the early days of the printing press. But nowadays everyone and his brother is a desktop publisher.

 

[Umbran]

Depends on game system, and on campaign. Sometimes, I'll run a game that's by the book only. Others, I'll do more extensive tweaking. Varies based upon what I want, flavor wise.

 

[Desdichado]

What exactly do you consider house rules? With so many rules in print, do you consider core classes that are in print somewhere else to be a house rule, or just a variant rule?

For example, my "D&D" homebrew is really more of a d20 Modern homebrew, but I've got occupations I swiped from somebody here on enworld, I've got firearms rules from Freeport, I've got magic from d20 Call of Cthulhu (with a little table reminiscent of all the nastiness that could potentially happen when you try to use psychic powers in WH40K thrown in to boot -- that, at least, is an all-new original house rule.)

When your mechanics are "kitbashed" together like mine, you can either say that I essentially rewrote the entire book, but from another perspective, I actually rewrote very little of it, I was just very selective on what I included and where it came from.

 

[RangerWickett]

Lesse . . . my house rules in a nutshell.

Well, I think up lots of house rules, but it's hard to implement some of them without player interest (for example, no one has wanted to play a Wild Spellcaster, alas, though they make for interesting NPCs).

However, I do use a modified wound point system. PCs get bonus WP equal to their Con (or 3/4 Con for small characters). WP heal at a rate of 1 per day (or 1 per die of magical healing). Normal hit points heal like old subdual damage used to heal, 1 per level per hour. I wanted to make it so clerics weren't necessary for a game to be playable, so I removed the need for magical healing.

Also, like many others, I don't use favored classes for multiclassing. I also don't use the class skill system; as long as a PC has a reason for learning something, he can spend skill points on it.

I created some of my own special mage-dueling rules, because one of the PCs wanted them. Made up a few new races, a few prestige classes. I suppose all the stuff I've written for Nat20 could count as house rules, too; whenever I give a PC a special power, I figure out its cost using Four-Color to Fantasy's superpower rules, and I've run a few games and drinking competitions using the stuff from Tournaments, Fairs, & Taverns.

No one uses Tumble, but if they did I'd use Piratecat's suggestion that the Tumble check sets your AC for any attacks of opportunity you incur while tumbling.

I've also adopted a system one of my fellow DMs uses. Whenever I, as GM, really don't care one way or another how something turns out, or when I want to see how bad a fumble is or how lucky someone is, I just roll d%. Low rolls are bad for the party, high are good. Say a PC wants to buy some healing potions in a small village, where there aren't likely to be any. I'd roll, and say on a 90+, he might find some, or on a 10 or less he might anger someone while he's trying to buy 'evil magic'.

Or, if a PC fumbles an attack roll, and I roll a 90 or higher, he might just get a -2 penalty to his next attack roll because he's off balance. From a 40 to an 89, he incurs an attack of opportunity from his foe. 11 to 39 he'd be flat-footed and incur an attack of opportunity, and 10 or less he'd probably lose his balance, fall down, and drop his weapon. Depends on the cirucmstances, though.

 

[Balsamic Dragon]

I've tried to keep my house rules minimal with 3E. Partly because I wanted to really test how the system was written, partly because I was teaching it to so many newbies, and partly because you need to learn d20 straight first in order to play all the other d20 games. Of course, I've rewritten every prestige class I've come across and quite a bit of the materials in the splat books, but that doesn't really count.

However!

When 3.5 comes out, the gloves are off. If WOTC hasn't changed some things that I think need changing, then I'm going to do it myself. New Jumping rules, new item creation rules, new spell component rules. If I don't see improvement in these and other areas (the Ranger of course), then I'm going to make them myself

Balsamic Dragon

 

[LGodamus]

I only have a few pages ...mostly adding options or fixing things whose flavor doesnt fit my ideas for my homebrew ...sometimes even fixing balance issues...