House Rules That Cause Unintended Consequences

[jmucchiello]

This post feels off-topic as it doesn't involve the consumption of dragons....

A player, who misread two-weapon fighting, convinced the DM that he should be allowed to move and strike with both weapons as his attack action. I grumbled but when the tank was doing 30+ points per hit, the guy with two shortswords getting an extra attack didn't seem to matter.

So I guest-DMed in the game and the party runs into a certain kind of demon.... The pc spring attacks the demon and hits twice with high fives all around. The demon goes and spring attacks hitting with all six arms, dropping the same pc to negatives. "Hey, this marilith has multiweapon fighting and spring attack so it makes sense she can get all her attack with an attack action."

They won the fight and the house rule stands and its funny how many more mariliths we seem to run into now....

 

[Gez]

I love liver, that and steak, especially New York strip and Filet Mingon (Sp?). Can't get enough.

Mignon. (With the "gn" pronounced a bit like a Spanish ñ, or like a "ni". Mignon being the word that was transcribed in English phonetics by minion.)

Mingon sounds like a race of Chinese ETs fought by Flash Gordon.

 

[ARandomGod]

I don't think I've ever gone from thinking "that's really cool" to "that's really distrubing" faster in any post.

Yesss...

I have to second the ROFL.

That indeed did go from cool to disturbing pretty quick. And you pointing it out made me smile and actually literally laugh out loud (not roll on the floor, but these things are prone to hyperbole)

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

I would have hit the pcs with a dragon version of (incurable) mad cow disease. Of course as the guilty dm I'd also commit ritual seppeku.

 

[yennico]

Dragon-Crack?

Dragon flesh is addictive?

No wonder they're always terrorizing the land, burning all the see. They're afraid of being eaten!

Once you taste dragon-flesh, you don't go back.

Though a type of Ghoul that only consumes dragon flesh sounds pretty cool.

In Rifts a class called dragon juicer exists. A juicer is somebody who is addicted to drugs which boost his abilities. They live fast and die young. A dragon juicer is juicer who is addicted to special treated blood of a dragon.

 

[woodelf]

Lots (nowhere near as many as are raised in California, which makes more cheese than Wisconsin, but New York is a big dairy producer).

Wisconsin is still #1 for cheese. I believe CA surpassed WI for total dairy production (mostly milk) a couple years back--but, hey, they've got us out-landed by, what, 3:1?, so it's hardly a fair contest.

 

[BronzeDragon]

Maybe there's a secret bovine enclave in New York?

There is no cow level...

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

We once ran a round-robin dm campaign.

Our characters levelled up to something like 6th level in 3 weeks & I thought "how about we space out the campaign with a bit of time? I know, we'll add a training period!" Okay, everyone grumbles & itches but agrees & then it is another guys turn to dm - and we're about to level up...

We get a letter inviting us to the "Island of Doom", cost 1000gp. Okay we pay & go. We arrive at a training island where knights run around in a cordoned paddock whacking each other with soft red rubber bats for 'training'. A month of training goes by, we level up, verisimilitude is destroyed for good.

He thought my idea sucked but he went along with it & whacked us with a vengeance. I will never round-robin dm again without very careful & open cooperation

 

[Sigg]

OTOH the dragon-vittles rule makes a good excuse for increasing the number of undead dragon encounters....

 

[Numion]

This is why I have reservations about playing in games with house rules. They almost always have unforeseen secondary side-effects. When a clever player naturally tries to grasp a new opportunity created by the side-effect, the DM is caught off guard and tries to backtrack or nerf the house rule, creating a lack of consistency and seeming to punish a player for being clever and/or creative. Rules are play tested for a reason. Not every DM is a game-designer. If a DM is not ready to live with the consequences of his own house rules, then he has no business trying to create some. The same goes for home-made magic items, weapons, feats and prestige classes. That's just my two cents on the matter. :\

This is so true. The best way to get a DM to rescind a middle-of-the-encounter houserule or shoddy rules interpretion that goes against the PCs is to feign being cool with it, and mumbling something like "It's a good rule, we can use it too, I'm happy with it". You don't really have to have any inkling how you might use it against the monsters, and probably couldn't, but the doubt enters the DMs mind.

The rule might be rescinded pretty fast