Most Common House Rules

[Nebulous]

-Hobby skills. Every character gets 3 skills, chosen at level 1, that advance automatically at maximum ranks. I made a list of skills that players choose from that represent skills that could be a "hobby" or even a second profession. Skills like Appraise, Climb, Knowledge, Profession, Survival. These skills automatically advance at full rank and are considered 'class skills' for that character for all intents and purposes. (this was done because I felt that some classes were lacking in skills. Players were not taking skills like appraise, knowledge, etc because they needed to spend skill points on skills they would be using the most often)

I might add that too. Simple, clean, and fills a niche that i perceive as a problem.

In my campaigns, i let the Toughness Feat add 3 + your level or HD. It can be taken multiple times. This way, only one feat is needed that scales easily, and it is extremely useful to low level characters, and even higher level.

 

[catsclaw227]

Hit points are rolled as 1/2 hit die + 1/2 maximum for hit die. Ie, a cleric rolls 1d4+4, a barbarian 1d6+6. While this leads to fighter having to roll a "d5," it's easy to fake that for one roll per level.

This prevents bad die rolls over a few levels from cripling characters.

Another house rule I have seen, with regards to hitpoints, is to allow the players to roll their HD 3x and take the highest one. This way if the cleric rolls a 2, 4, 7 she gets 7 HP. Not sure what kind of additional effect this will have. I guess it would have similar results to the system above.

 

[catsclaw227]

The max hit points rule was probably an incredibly widespread houserule that was finally adopted, much like the "not dead till -10hp" rule. It used to be you were dead at 0, back in the day when we had to walk uphill both ways through 10' of snow to get to the dungeon and wizards were "magic-users."

Wow, your PCs had it rough. We all had nannys, got new carriages when we were 16, were captains of the lancing team and always got that cool new tabard when we saw it on Crystal-ball-o-vision.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I know what it feels like to have bad luck as a player, so when I DM I standardize all permanent aspects of the PCs. Namely Point-buy stats and average HP. I use whatever point-buy seems appropriate to the campaign and for HP, I typed up a chart of average hp for each HD until level 40 so I can easily check up on where each PC should be. Not that I've had many cheaters, but hp are surprisingly easy to mess up for the math-challenged.

 

[catsclaw227]

I know what it feels like to have bad luck as a player, so when I DM I standardize all permanent aspects of the PCs. Namely Point-buy stats and average HP. I use whatever point-buy seems appropriate to the campaign and for HP, I typed up a chart of average hp for each HD until level 40 so I can easily check up on where each PC should be. Not that I've had many cheaters, but hp are surprisingly easy to mess up for the math-challenged.

I definately utilize point buy for stats, usually 30pts or 32pts.

 

[jedavis]

catsclaw: I've always used the three HD rolls/HD rule, and it seems to work fine. Also always use 5d6 and drop 2 for ability scores (Yes, no one ever ends up with ability penalties, but no one whines either (I did play a half-orc once who ended up with a natural 5 in intelligence, plus racial penalty ended up with a 3... probably the most fun for RPing I've ever had)). Between those two, PCs usually end up a little overpowered, but I suspect that the ability scores have more to do with it. With a slight increase in encounter difficulty, all becomes balanced...

Failed houserule: No XP cost for crafting magic items. That was fun...once, back when I PCed rather than DMed.

The Specialist spontaneous wizards rule would make specialists much more prominent indeed. Not neccessarily a bad thing (never player one, never had a PC play one).

Swapping familiar for a feat? That's a tough one. Does toad still give +2 con in 3.5? I'd probably take the toad over a feat at low levels.

Like the hobby skills and toughness stuff too.

Hadn't thought of the pause rule. I find the AoO rules pretty clear cut (then again, my PCs onlt get the general gist; "Don't cast spells or fire crossbow while standing next to orc"). There are some other rules that this could work for though (grappling...pain).

 

[JustKim]

Opposed Diplomacy checks -- I think this is Rich Burlew mechanic (of Order of the Stick fame). Located here.

Terrible house rule, IMO. Rich assumes that a Diplomacy check is intended to allow you to completely circumvent the rest of the game and do things like trade beans for artifacts, and then he makes rules to define how you could do that. He took offense at something that was only imagined and then brought a lot of people over to his way of thinking.

When you have the capability of doing things like that with Diplomacy, the skill is much, much worse. A -20 penalty is completely insufficient for being able to convince anyone of anything, because you can make mid-level characters with +50 bonuses to Diplomacy. The core system may not be perfect, but it works much better- you just have to be able to anticipate what "friendly" or "helpful" means for a particular NPC, and be ready to make compromises on the fly. That's the nature of negotiation.

 

[catsclaw227]

When you have the capability of doing things like that with Diplomacy, the skill is much, much worse. A -20 penalty is completely insufficient for being able to convince anyone of anything, because you can make mid-level characters with +50 bonuses to Diplomacy. The core system may not be perfect, but it works much better- you just have to be able to anticipate what "friendly" or "helpful" means for a particular NPC, and be ready to make compromises on the fly. That's the nature of negotiation.

How can you make mid-level PCs with +50 bonuses to Diplomacy? I know this will sound like blasphemy to some, but I also use a healthy dose of GM Fiat with regards to Diplomacy.

 

[JustKim]

It's not difficult, and you can get much higher. Assume 20 Charisma at level 10, 13 ranks, +18.
+6 from synergy, +24.
+5 from Skill Focus and Negotiator, +29.
One level of Warlock, +35.
Cloak of Charisma +4, +37.
Circlet of persuasion, +40.

+40 at level 10 with one level dip, two feats, and 20,000 gp. This does not even include the various extra skill bonuses from PrCs like Exemplar, other sources of Charisma, or temporary buffs like friendly face.

By Rich's system, the DC to swindle someone who loathes you more than anything in the world of what they treasure most would be about 45 at this level. You can make this check without batting an eye. If a couple of friends help out, you cannot fail.

 

[jedavis]

Note: the below is not intended to bash upon any particular viewpoint. It is intended to analyze a previous statement. I haven't actually read Rich's rules yet. If I do, I will then post my opinion on them.

Short of getting totally whacked out skill boost magic items, I don't know how you'd do it. For the sake of argument, let us assume a 10th to 15th level human bard. Max ranks in diplomacy, natural 18 Cha, +6 enhancement bonus from a magic item, +3 bonus from leveling (total charisma 27 (modifier +8)), skill focus (diplomacy), +1 luckstone (most characters I know of buy one at the first opportunity(how much do they cost in 3.5? 20k? Durn...))... that totals +25 for the 10th level bard or +30 for the 15th level bard, assuming no spells or affects specifically boosting diplomacy. So that's at least a +20 item of diplomacy to get it to +50 (theoretically, if he had a lot of gold, he could also boost his Cha higher with the books of inherent ability bonuses). Hmmm, according to my handy copy of Tome and Blood (still running partially on 3.0), a skill bonus costs bonus squared times 20 gp...wow, that's cheap... that totals around 8000 gold for +20 to diplomacy. Assuming your DM will allow such a thing.

Total cost (for the whole schebang): 64000 gold for magic items. 10-15 levels of bard (though rogue would suffice as well). 1 feat (didn't factor in greater skill focus; not including any alternate "Improved Skill focus" type feats from 3rd party sources).

In conclusion: Yes, it is fully possible to build a character who could do some crazy crap with diplomacy. However, I'm not sure any DM is going to allow him to do the really crazy stuff mentioned earlier.

EDIT: Whoops, forgot synergy, circlet, and warlock. I'm pretty sure the two feats don't stack though.