Let's rant! When house rules get stoopid...

[Herzog]

Ok, I got one for you.

This houserule, used by a friend of mine, originally came from my table.

I was playing Rules Cyclopedia D&D at the time, and had a large, and spread-out party: 6 players with characters ranging from lvl 5 to 10.

Because we didn't get to play very often (campaign still running, but now using 3.5 rules, playing at most 4 times per year....) the player of the highest lvl character got kind of frustrated: at the XP rate we were going, taking into account how much we played, she calculated she'd have to wait about 10 years to gain another lvl. So, i introduced a workaround.

Apart from 'normal' XP, every character would earn 10% of his Needed-for-next lvl XP, so he or she would lvl at least every 10 sessions.

Of course, in hindsight, I should have seen the problem with this: because the higher lvl characters kept gaining lvls, the lower lvl characters kept being behind far longer then they would normally would.

With the 3.5 system adopted, I also adopted that XP system, and never looked back.

Until I realised a friend of mine had adopted the system for his own AD&D 2nd ed. game, with an even worse side-effect than my own system had had in my game:

Not only did he use the '10% rule', in addition he only gave out 'regular' XP at the end of every adventure (instead of once per session).

Since the rules say you can't gain more than one lvl per XP gain, and the XP per adventure regularly was more than enough to gain three or four lvls for the lowest lvl characters, those characters effectively gained LESS XP, making them fall behind even more!

I've tried to dissuade him from both houserules, but to no effect thusfar.

'Luckily', he plays even less than my campaign does.....

 

[Sylrae]

I tried out a houserule that was terrible. interesting, and hilarioius, but terrible.

*you can make AoOs with ranged weapons against a valid target.*

a player provoked an AoO.

A dozen bandits with crossbows were going to shoot down the player.

All of the other players with ranged weapons got free attacks on the bandits.

it was ridiculous. Very Funny, but ridiculous.

It made it through 1 round of combat before being stricken from the table.

 

[Chronologist]

In my current campaign, the DM house-ruled that Book of Nine Swords was not allowed. Okay, I thought, not a problem, I'll go ahead and make a normal character. Then, a character in the party takes a PrC for Bo9S. Then, to top it off, the villain of one particular arc is a Crusader. I don't think it's right to house-rule that the player's can't play something that you're going to use in the campaign.

More on topic, one of my old DMs once house-ruled that "anything that makes sense in real life happens in D&D". Sounds fine, until you start fighting Huge creatures... that fall on your character... and do massive amounts of damage.

Another Dm houseruled that alignments were variable and subjective, which lead to the Lawful Neutral character going around murdering random people in their sleep and killing other PCs, and the main antagonists of one arc to be Lawful Good Paladins that murdered innocent people (mostly shifters and humans) and generally acted like the Children of the Light from the Wheel of Time (or, alternatively, the Blood of the Fold from the Wizard's First Rule series).

When the Paladin can't smite people who murder children in their sleep, something has gone horribly wrong.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

In my current campaign, the DM house-ruled that Book of Nine Swords was not allowed. Okay, I thought, not a problem, I'll go ahead and make a normal character. Then, a character in the party takes a PrC for Bo9S. Then, to top it off, the villain of one particular arc is a Crusader. I don't think it's right to house-rule that the player's can't play something that you're going to use in the campaign.

Your DM was being an ass, wow. See, I'm considering banning ToB in my next game, at least the classes, but leaving the feats and maneuvers open for plucking. I may use adept classes for some villains who are Reshar-like long lived martial artists. Bu I would tell the players at the start of the game that NPCs aren't necessarily prohibited from the same things they are. That seems fair to me. Letting one player go and break your houserules while holding others in the group to it, though...that's just unforgivable!

More on topic, one of my old DMs once house-ruled that "anything that makes sense in real life happens in D&D". Sounds fine, until you start fighting Huge creatures... that fall on your character... and do massive amounts of damage.

What? No counter argument based on physics that creatures that large couldn't support their own bulk, anatomically?

Another Dm houseruled that alignments were variable and subjective, which lead to the Lawful Neutral character going around murdering random people in their sleep and killing other PCs, and the main antagonists of one arc to be Lawful Good Paladins that murdered innocent people (mostly shifters and humans) and generally acted like the Children of the Light from the Wheel of Time (or, alternatively, the Blood of the Fold from the Wizard's First Rule series).

When the Paladin can't smite people who murder children in their sleep, something has gone horribly wrong.

More importantly...how the hell does someone like a Paladin, who instantly has all his class features taken away for changing alignments even for a shirt while, ever remain a Paladin? Weekly atonements? Praying to god you don't have a sudden outbreak of the crazies mid-combat and lose all your abilities when you need them most (kinda reminds me of a more nasty version of lycanthropy affliction).

 

[Celebrim]

In my current campaign, the DM house-ruled that Book of Nine Swords was not allowed. Okay, I thought, not a problem, I'll go ahead and make a normal character. Then, a character in the party takes a PrC for Bo9S. Then, to top it off, the villain of one particular arc is a Crusader. I don't think it's right to house-rule that the player's can't play something that you're going to use in the campaign.

???

House ruling that the Bo9S is not allowed is not only reasonable in my opinion, but the preferred ruling - since the Bo9S classes aren't balanced with classes from other material IMO. The only exception I would make would be for a campaign where only the Bo9S classes were allowed.

Personally, I agree with you that its bad rules that let NPCs do what PCs cannot, but if I understand you correctly its worse than that. Letting an NPC do things that a PC can't is potentially only a minor irritation, but letting one player break the house rules selectively is just simply bad DMing that has nothing to do with bad house rules.

More on topic, one of my old DMs once house-ruled that "anything that makes sense in real life happens in D&D". Sounds fine, until you start fighting Huge creatures... that fall on your character... and do massive amounts of damage.

This isn't necessarily bad, but its particular implementation could be terrible I agree. Personally, I have no problem with the conception of a huge creature falling down and crushing things, but good rules for it would be tricky.

1) The Creature would have to collapse in a fairly random direction.
2) The collapse would have to have no more chance of success than a normal attack, ergo it would have to involve an attack roll or reflex save.
3) The collapse damage would have to be appropriate to the level of damage expected for a falling weight, and in particular, would have to take into account that only a portion of the creatures weight would impact and be born by any one thing beneath it. Most of the weight of a collapsed frost giant would be born by the ground.

When the Paladin can't smite people who murder children in their sleep, something has gone horribly wrong.

This is just an example of someone letting their own moral values impinge too much on the alignment system of D&D. If you are personally a moral relativist, either you need to accept that the D&D world doesn't describe the world you believe really exists, or else you need to throw out alignments so that the D&D world can describe the world you believe exists. Try to make the generally morally absolute world of alignments fit into a morally relativistic viewpoint is doomed to failure.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

This is just an example of someone letting their own moral values impinge too much on the alignment system of D&D. If you are personally a moral relativist, either you need to accept that the D&D world doesn't describe the world you believe really exists, or else you need to throw out alignments so that the D&D world can describe the world you believe exists. Try to make the generally morally absolute world of alignments fit into a morally relativistic viewpoint is doomed to failure.

Or you can be a moral relativist and thus have a wide range of acceptable player views on what an alignment could mean. A moral relativist would probably not really care if you wanted to play a genocidal Miko Miyazaki smite anything that's evil just because Paladin, a "killing is always evil" softie Paladin, or a Sir Cedric (Shilsen's Paladin from these boards) whoring and boozing Paladin, and would probably have all sorts of those archetypes in his campaign without issue. Cause hey, lawful good can't be easily pinned down to mean one thing anyway, so whatever.

A moral absolutist, on the other hand, is much more likely to say their view of what it means to be lawful good is the only acceptable and allowed way to play it.

You know, just demonstrating that poor DMing can be caused by the other side, too, rather than just let you take a dump on moral relativists alone.

 

[Celebrim]

You know, just demonstrating that poor DMing can be caused by the other side, too, rather than just let you take a dump on moral relativists alone.

Oh certainly, I don't disagree. And I should have known that you wouldn't have taken that lying down. We must definately defend what's right and lecture other people about their beliefs, because you know, we wouldn't want other people to be wrong; now would we?

I would like to refrain from pointing out that you just proved my point, but I'm not that strong of a person.

 

[Chronologist]

The Bo9S thing would not be as huge a problem if he didn't run 5 session long days. It took us 8 sessions to complete a story arc, and it was 2 days long. My Factotum barely recovered his spells, the Monk ran out of Stunning Fist halfway through, and the Ninja nearly died about 8 times. I don't even want to mention the Wizard. The fact that the whole "ability attrition" thing could have been averted if he'd let us use Bo9S kinda pissed me off. Plus, it meant that since we fought the villain not once, but three times, he (a Crusader) never got weaker, and all the PCs did. Huh.

The falling creature thing normally sounds bad... except it killed my brand new character on the first session. No save, no attack roll, just 15d6 damage because he felt like it. It WAS a Huge earth elemental, but still, it was a dick move. I stopped playing with him because of that.

I prefer moral relativism in a D&D campaign, but only if everybody knows that's what we're using. However, the DM has clearly stated that this is world uses moral absolution, yet the villains were all Lawful Good, so much so that, and get this, an evil (temporary) party member was affected by the "good" villain cleric's abilities. The same cleric who basically murdered about a hundred innocents the previous day.

When Protection from Evil didn't work on those guys, I basically left the table and waited for combat to be over.

On another note, my current DM has an unstated house rule. "The PCs never die". Whenever a damaging attack is coming, he asks for our hit points. NPCs stop what they're doing in combat and heal us when we're dying. We automatically stabilize at -9. Random healing comes out of nowhere occasionally. When facing a tough opponent and losing, an NPC does something heroic to save us.

So, does anyone else have this problem? I don't want my character to die, but it's no fun to play without a sense of risk. Have you ever had a DM that pulled punches? I'm tired of it but I think he'll be offended if I tell him. Is there an easy way to break it to him? I think he's threaded our characters into the plot, and therefore doesn't want them to die, but it's getting to the point of railroading.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Oh certainly, I don't disagree. And I should have known that you wouldn't have taken that lying down. We must definately defend what's right and lecture other people about their beliefs, because you know, we wouldn't want other people to be wrong; now would we?

I would like to refrain from pointing out that you just proved my point, but I'm not that strong of a person.

So, by asserting that you can't really pin good or bad DMing to one moral view or the other, I went against relativism? Man I love it when people try and tell me I'm not allowed to defend a position without forfeiting my relativism club membership! It's like being in a school debate, and the only thing the other team can think to respond with is, "shut up!"

The Bo9S thing would not be as huge a problem if he didn't run 5 session long days. It took us 8 sessions to complete a story arc, and it was 2 days long. My Factotum barely recovered his spells, the Monk ran out of Stunning Fist halfway through, and the Ninja nearly died about 8 times. I don't even want to mention the Wizard. The fact that the whole "ability attrition" thing could have been averted if he'd let us use Bo9S kinda pissed me off. Plus, it meant that since we fought the villain not once, but three times, he (a Crusader) never got weaker, and all the PCs did. Huh.

Eh, it's a good trick if the DM's using legitimate planning or tactics to let the villain slip away only to come back later. I had great fun one time wearing down a party by having a ghost with near unlimited healing capacity attack them several times, only to retreat into the wals when badly hurt, weakening them for the true fight with him once they reached the Macguffin. If the party figures out a way to stop the little bugger from getting away and the DM clearly bs's some excuse why it doesn't work (like say, he has a nervous pause, stressfully thinks to himself for a while, and then gets an "aha!" look on his face just before saying why it doesn't work) just to not screw up his plans...that's pretty wrong. In my party's case, they really had no means to stop the ghost from plinking at them at will. They kind of knew it would be like that going in, though, and had lots of healing resources and some per encounter ToB stuff themselves.

The falling creature thing normally sounds bad... except it killed my brand new character on the first session. No save, no attack roll, just 15d6 damage because he felt like it. It WAS a Huge earth elemental, but still, it was a dick move. I stopped playing with him because of that.

I don't blame you. It hurt as much as an empowered fireball from a 10th level Wizard or a 150 ft fall, did it? That's stupid. And how do you not get a reflex save to dodge something falling on you? That's what the reflex save exists for! So that when the DM says, "rocks fall, everyone dies," you can proudly declare "Nat 20! I make my reflex save!"

I prefer moral relativism in a D&D campaign, but only if everybody knows that's what we're using. However, the DM has clearly stated that this is world uses moral absolution, yet the villains were all Lawful Good, so much so that, and get this, an evil (temporary) party member was affected by the "good" villain cleric's abilities. The same cleric who basically murdered about a hundred innocents the previous day.

When Protection from Evil didn't work on those guys, I basically left the table and waited for combat to be over.

Relativism and Absolutism both have their benefits in terms of how to handle D&D morality. Also, wow, that's awful.

On another note, my current DM has an unstated house rule. "The PCs never die". Whenever a damaging attack is coming, he asks for our hit points. NPCs stop what they're doing in combat and heal us when we're dying. We automatically stabilize at -9. Random healing comes out of nowhere occasionally. When facing a tough opponent and losing, an NPC does something heroic to save us.

So, does anyone else have this problem? I don't want my character to die, but it's no fun to play without a sense of risk. Have you ever had a DM that pulled punches? I'm tired of it but I think he'll be offended if I tell him. Is there an easy way to break it to him? I think he's threaded our characters into the plot, and therefore doesn't want them to die, but it's getting to the point of railroading.

Nope, never had anything that frequent or severe. What your DM is doing is called Deus Ex Machina. It's actually listed in the DMG as one of the worst possible ways to DM a game. You should look it up, just for kicks.

Now, far less frequently and with much less magnitude, my groups have had the DM pull punches when things turn bad, just no where near to the level your DM does it. The most egregious exampel was probably one time my party decided to bite off WAY more than they could chew and actually go after a powerful sorcerer who was intended to become their major nemesis later on in the game. Like...10 or so levels later. So, combat is joined, we all get hit by a massive blast radius spell immediately.
DM: *rolls a LOT of dice. then picks up some more to roll because it turns out he didn't have enough to roll all of the damage dice at once* ...How much hp do you guys each have?
Players: *worried looks, some begin replying*
DM: *thinks for a moment, realizes that our answers really don't matter, he rolled high enough to kill us all 2-3 times over*
DM: ...You're all knocked unconscious. You awaken a few days later in a jail cell.

He didn't really want to TPK us, so he just ad hoc'd that the spell did nonlethal damage somehow. We didn't mind the mercy, we still got taken prisoner and had to escape and find our gear, so there was a penalty for losing.

 

[Celebrim]

So, by asserting that you can't really pin good or bad DMing to one moral view or the other, I went against relativism?

No and no, I agreed with that part, if you'll remember.

Man I love it when people try and tell me I'm not allowed to defend a position without forfeiting my relativism club membership!

Well, it is like being the guy who is sure he is openminded, but that everyone else is closeminded and wrong. If you are sure that morality is relative, then you ought to be equally convinced that your views are no better than anyone elses and likewise that there is no point in trying to convince anyone that they are wrong.

But more to the point of the thread, Chronologist is complaining about a situation where the antagonist was murdering innocents, but remained immune to the PC's 'smite evil' ability (presumably because the action wasn't evil). And you responded to me by saying:

A moral relativist would probably not really care if you wanted to play a genocidal Miko Miyazaki smite anything that's evil just becausePaladin, a "killing is always evil" softie Paladin, or a Sir Cedric (Shilsen's Paladin from these boards) whoring and boozing Paladin, and would probably have all sorts of those archetypes in his campaign without issue. Cause hey, lawful good can't be easily pinned down to mean one thing anyway, so whatever.

- emphasis added

Exactly. In which case, its also true that lawful good can mean murdering innocents in their sleep. Because if it isn't true that lawful good can mean that, then you are asserting that there is some standard to law and good which is absolutely true, regardless of whether you assert that there are other aspects to it which are relative (like whether you were black or white hats, or whether you consume or refrain from consuming alcohol, etc.) and matters of personal choice. And if that is what you are asserting, then you don't differ significantly from an absolutist position.