How many House rules are too many?

[Rechan]

How many house rules are enough for your group, how many are too many?

I am finding that the more I hang around ENWorld, the more cool Houserule ideas I have or want to steal, the more things I want to tear out or change when it comes to a system. Many of those rules are PC creation or fundamental math based, others are other fundamental elements of "how this works".

Thing is, I don't want to drive off would-be players by altering the system too significantly or having Too Many New Rules. Further, I don't want Rules Lag, people forgetting too many/having to relearn things due to the system.

 

[Piratecat]

I don't write them down. When I have too many to easily recall off the top of my head, that's too many.

So owlbears being called "browls"? Easy. +1 to hit for describing your attack? Sure. Complex variant casting system everyone needs to look up? No thank you.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

"Too many" is of course subjective. In my experience my groups have been able to handle a lot. But confusion definitely becomes part of the problem as we forget which way house rules have gone in the past.

So my main piece of advice to you is :WRITE THEM DOWN. Preferably in advance in a nice, clear document that you can hand out to your players at the start of a campaign. But also write down any house rulings you make on the fly for later, careful consideration. And of course don't be scared to modify your house rules, but give plenty of warning when you do.

And of course listen to the players input. House rules are for the house game and should be discussed as such and everyone gets a say in them.

cheers!

 

[Jacob Marley]

It is not so much a matter of quantity in as much as it is a matter of quality. If the house rule is intuitive, limited in scope (i.e. I only need to know it once), easy to implement, and/or it cleans up an agreed upon problem with the rules, then I would be fine with pages upon pages of house rules. However, many house rules I come across are often quite convoluted, difficult to implement, and often create bigger problems than the one they attepted to solve. Those are the house rules that I find to be one too many.

 

[Izumi]

Always fun to adjust the game to your weird preferences! Getting people to try your crazy ideas isn't very easy though!

Like the time I thought the Core abilities weren't Japy enough...

Shin- Heart/Spirit.
Sei- Accuracy/Precision
Kan- Senses/Perception
Chi- Intelligence/Knowledge/Wisdom
Bin- Speed/Agility/Reaction
Riki- Physical Power/Perseverance
Dan- Judgement/Decisiveness


Racial Score + 2d6 to determine the core ability scores. Classes are chosen depending upon what suits your abilites, of course. Easy, ne?!

Or the time that I decided the alignment system from shinobigami was superior to the D&D one...

Wicked- Wishes to harass, destroy, and/or kill things for the sake of doing so.
Lawful- Wishes to correct the ills of society for the good of all.
Selfish- Does things only for himself, and wishes to gain fame, wealth, money, and/or power.
Emotional- Does all for someone else, an individual he/she has an emotional connection for or with.
Loyal- Puts his sovereign, state, race, or group as most important above individuals and himself.
Free-Spirited- Believes in bringing joy to all others no matter who they are.

Or the ill-fated attempt to add the six senses onto D&D...


The Six Senses (2d6 in order modified by Race)
Sight- reflects ones visual acuity and seeing distance.
Hearing- reflects ones listening ability, and ability to notice things one can hear.
Smell- reflects how delicate and sensitive ones nose is to odors.
Touch- reflects how sensitive ones body is to outside stimuli including temperature.
Taste- reflects how sensitive ones taste buds are, and their ability to discern things.
Magic Sense- reflects how sensitive to the presence of magic your character is.

I guess the answer is that house-rules should be used sparingly if they do nothing to improve the game. Alas...

 

[[OMENRPG]Ben]

I think that house rules should realistically fall under the DM's jurisdiction.

Essentially the less rules the players need to know, the more interactive they can be with their character. Of course this is my opinion, and a lot of players love tons of crunch, but I've always found that if a player wants to have a very neat or specific action, and there isn't a rule for that, it limits what choices he believes he has.

House rules are usually different ways of solving problems solved by other rules (or sometimes ignored.) I think when it becomes counter-intuitive or nit-picky, rules get in the way more than they help. Really though, I think a lot of in-game rulings should be done just on the spot by the DM. For character creation though, a lot of rules and other stuff can get tricky.

The other thing to consider is that a lot of house rules add complexity to the game, and that complexity when stacked with other things can either become a boggled mess or unbalanced. For instance in one of my games a long time ago (I'm talking when I was still in high school) I as the DM came up with some rules that I thought were pretty cool. One of the biggest changes were called "enhancements" and were essentially like Feats but very specific and tied in to skills, other feats, or just overall abilities. Some of them added hit points, others added conditional attack/defense modifiers, so on.

Needless to say, the players loved it because of how beastly it made their characters, but we weren't really playing D&D any more.

 

[GSHamster]

One page. Normally typed, lots of white space.

 

[steenan]

It depends on what type of house rules you have.

House rules that you must remember in the process of play? One page is the upper limit and I strongly suggest using less.

House rules that affect character creation and leveling? You may easily have a couple of pages and it won't be a problem - you don't need to remember them all and may just use a reference.

House rules like classes and races modified and tailored to fit your setting? Sky is the limit. People are willing to work with hundreds of pages in PHB and splatbooks, so even if your creations are of similar size, it shouldn't matter much.

 

[catsclaw227]

I think the answer is 57. According to Steve Martin.

 

[Nagol]

Here's what I try to keep to; if I can't, I look for a different game system that better suits what I'm trying to accomplish.

For rule changes that affect general play, less than a page reasonably formatted. If specific classes are being changed (like a mana point system for Sorcerors or a rewrite of a class), this page should mention that change and the details can be spelled out separately.

There shouldn't be more than 4-5 pages total.

Rule extensions are extra -- these are new sub-systems (like running a manor or a mass-combat system for 3.X) . These can be longer, but don't expect the players to have read/remember/know them at the table until after they've been focused on in the campaign and perhaps not then.