House Rules


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I haven't done the combat, so I can't really houserule that.

1) I'm going to do a lot of changes to the skill system. Unfortunately, I think 4e went backwards in fixing the problems I had with skills, namely the completely erratic method of choosing what classes got what skills.

2) Dragonborn and new tieflings are not going to be very populous in our settings. Unless I can just modify dragonborn into exotic new lizardfolk, and tiefling mechanics allow me to change their fluff to reflect the old 3e ones.
 



I have always liked higher powered PCs in my campaign. We all enjoy the extra flair and sense of power, and it allows me to throw more at them at once to make things feel really epic. As such, I am going to house rule that all encounter powers the players have include a "Refresh 6" rule. Once per turn they can roll a d6 and if its a 6 they can refresh one of their expended encounter powers.

I'm also considering adding a similar thing for dailies. Refresh 20 maybe, which can be rolled once after each encounter.

Tell me what you guys think.
 

I'm planning to have all attacks (bar crits) do average damage. I want faster rounds, where what matters is whether or not the attack hits. My players are slow to make decisions, find dice, roll dice, add dice, tell me the result - if I can cut a few steps out I hope to speed the game up substantially.
 

A few things I'm considering:

* A character can choose a number of 'background/occupational skills' equal to their Intelligence bonus. These skills are things like 'Scribe' or 'Sailor' and are there mainly for flavor. They count as trained skills in the rare event they might actually need to be rolled. Otherwise they add a +2 bonus in the rare event (again) they impact normal skills.

* Encounter and Daily powers are 'not used' if the character rolls a 20 on the attack roll. I'm still considering this as I'm not sure how to get this working properly for burst attacks, as that increases the tendancy to roll a 20 by a lot.

* I may, depending on the full multiclassing rules, let you use your 'At Will Per Encounter' ability as At Will if you buy all four Multiclassing feats.
 

This may be more of a setting thing than a house rule, but I'm strongly considering combining the Feywild and the Shadowfell into a single "Other Realm" for my homebrew. The naturalistic Feywild as an alternate plane just doesn't mesh the local setting very well (it's high desert, and very wild to begin with, so having a wild woodland mirror universe just doesn't seem like a good fit). On the other hand, I don't want the mirror plane to be quite as doomed and mordorish as the Shadowfell. A somewhat wilder, somewhat gloomy reflection of the real world that combines aspects of both seems like a better alternative.
 

As far as actual house rules go, the biggie is going to be no divine power source, just martial and arcane. The fact that this is easily doable is is actually one of the things that excites me most about the new edition. No more clerics!

Arcane magic will be present, and quite common in some places (not Eberron level magic-as-tech common, but most good sized villages will have a hedge wizard or wise woman). In the main center of the campaign, however, magic has been very rare for the past millenia. It's coming back (casters aren't gimped or anything) but there is no magical tradition, so full casting classes are rare (if you want to play a wizard, you've got to be an immigrant, the best natives of the area can do is multiclass).

I think I'm going to go almost no magic items. There still will be magic swords and the like, but they will be very rare, very powerful artifacts that only show up in the epic tier (maybe the paragon tier). Probably no more than one per person. I'll probably introduce some sort of quality system for mundane gear, but the bonuses involved will be smaller and there won't be any flashy powers associated with them.

The other big change will be to races. No elves, no dwarves, no hobbits! No orcs, no goblins, no kobolds! The only humanoid species is going to be humans. Instead I'm going to use racial features to represent different nations (and for the main nation, social castes). The differences will be smaller than between the races as written (everybody gets the human skill, power and feat benefits, for instance) but there will be skill modifiers, racial feats that synergize with certain classes, etc.

On the opposing side, there will be very few intelligent monsters at all, other than human derived ones (lycanthropes, undead, etc.). In addition to PC races, this is obviously going to also limit opponents pretty heavily (animals, magical beasts, werewolves, undead, and humans). However, the exception based, modular approach of 4e will probably make it possible to plunder abilities from the MM races and use them for NPCs (give shifty Kobold powers to a group of bandits, or orc powers to a barbarian tribe).

So mostly rules adaption to fit the setting, rather than changing the game because I want something different. I'm really looking forward to 4e because seems like it will make it a lot easier to make some of these setting related changes than 3e did (particularly when it comes to clerics and magic items).
 
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Blackeagle said:
As far as actual house rules go, the biggie is going to be no divine power source, just martial and arcane. The fact that this is easily doable is is actually one of the things that excites me most about the new edition. No more clerics!

Arcane magic will be present, and quite common in some places (not Eberron level magic-as-tech common, but most good sized villages will have a hedge wizard or wise woman). In the main center of the campaign, however, magic has been very rare for the past millenia. It's coming back (casters aren't gimped or anything) but there is no magical tradition, so full casting classes are rare (if you want to play a wizard, you've got to be an immigrant, the best natives of the area can do is multiclass).

I'm not even sure if this counts as a "house rule". The power source, from what I gather, has practically no mechanical significance.
 

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