House Ruling 4E? How common

[Rechan]

It wouldn't surprise me if the number of people who use house rules hasn't changed much over the years. Either people want to change the system or they won't.

I have two pages of house rules (one page taken up by three really big ones that require lots of explainin). Only because I want to experiment.

 

[Simon Atavax]

It wouldn't surprise me if the number of people who use house rules hasn't changed much over the years. Either people want to change the system or they won't.

Well said. I remember back in the "the day" (the early 80s for you kids out there; at the time I was 13 or so) there were two kinds of AD&D 1e DMs: Those who houseruled, and those who sternly adhered to the RAW.

Guess what? Same thing today. "Meet the new boss; same as the old boss!"

 

[Pseudonym]

• Minions are tougher. I can dig the idea of a squishy minion, but 1 hit point is just too squishy.

This is, I believe, the only house rule we have. When minions take damage they get a save; make it and they live, fail they die. This has resulted in more than one occasion of where the big bad has been defeated only to have one remaining minion vexing us for several rounds after.

 

[Holy Bovine]

Oh yes - I always house rule games I run. Some a little, some a lot. 4E is, currently, one I house rule only a little (as in a few rules but some of them are pretty 'big'). For example

Extended rests do not restore hit points, only surges. Thus, as has happened on more than one occasion, if you end a days adventuring low on hit points and with no surges left you will, after a night's rest, gain back all of your surges but still be down a few hit points - which you can recover by spending a surge or two. Thus the extended rest is not the 'instaheal' is used to be you can have some lingering effects even if it is 'only' a lost surge or two.

All (or nearly all) monster defenses are reduced by 2. With the big HPs most monsters have hitting every round doesn't really slow them down. I also beef up the monsters damage in some cases.

'Soldier' role monsters shall not be used. I hate soldiers. I really, really hate them. If I simply must use a soldier it is never higher level than the party and never a solo :shudder:

I have a few more but they are more campaign/group specific. I am still wrestling with the minion question but I think I will do, for Paragon tier and above, the 'first hit bloodies, second hit kills' route.

 

[Nifft]

So far, all we've done is ban a few specific things (powers & items).

I don't think that counts as House Rules though.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Psikus]

I'm a houseruler by nature, and I tend to make rules for more stuff than I'll ever have time to play (then again, that's what the blog is for). Most of the time, they are for small details - patching a few feats or powers, adding a new feat here and there. I really enjoy the core game, but I love the exercise of balancing things.

Off the top of my head, on our current campaign we have houseruled the following:
- All PCs and monsters get the Distant Advantage feat for free (this actually came up before the feat existed, and is mostly to make our casual rogue player's life easier).
- The slowed condition also makes shifting cost twice as many squares of movement (we tried this to add some close quarters utility to slow, and liked it enough).
- Expertise feats not allowed, though we'll provide an equivalent bonus for free when we reach higher levels.
- Fighter stances weakened
- A few custom magic items given as treasure

 

[Gort]

I agree with making minions a bit tougher - I count them as having a quarter of the HP of a normal monster. To make it easier to track their HP, I write it down like a normal monster, so I might have:

Bugbear1: 35
Bugbear2: 35
BugbearMinions (9): 35

At the start of the battle. As minions get stabbed and injured, I'll remove one each time the total damage hits 9. If a player does more than 9 damage to a single minion, the extra damage is discarded. AOE damage works differently, and comes off the total amount.

It's a little hard to explain. Mostly it's a bit of a fudge really, rather than hard and fast rules, but I'll take that any day over guys taking 1 damage from an aura or some rubbish like that and keeling over before even being attacked. There just isn't any point to them being on the field at that point.

 

[Ryndal]

2 house rules both involving magical items

I have never asked my players for a "wish list" of magic items to be handed out as treasure parcels (seems very contrived in a game where many things are likewise contrived)

I do not use the Enchant an Item concept expressly as written. If players want a certain item - I often use mini quests to go make them find a few key logical components that are needed to create the item. They can then create the item using some of the stuff they found and I will lower the cost depending on the difficulty they had acquiring the components

 

[brainstorm]

No House Rules...yet

I'm fairly happy with the rules as written in 4E, but I am considering some minor house rules:

Minions: I like the fact that I don't have to do any book keeping with minions, but I don't like the fact that they fall over before getting an attack every time the PCs beat them on initiative. So, I'm contemplating giving them a saving throw ever time they are hit. If they save, they stick around for another round. If they fail, they fall. Tougher minions might get a +1 or +2 to their saving throw.

Power recharge: My players always gripe about the NPCs being able to recharge their powers, so I'm thinking about giving them a way to do so. I'm thinking about letting the PCs spend an action point to recover a power that was used up. Using an action point in this manner would be a minor action and that would let them use the recharged power in the same turn.

Monster Damage Output: Monsters get a damage bonus equal to +1 per half their level added to the bonus already listed. They also get a minor action power that they can use if they don't already have one listed. This will usually give them extra movement, a forced movement power, an immediate reaction, or an attack that imposes some kind of condition.

 

[davethegame]

Unless you count fiddling with Skill Challenges, the only house rule I have is about healing during a short rest. (Take average healing, don't worry about specific uses of healing power).