Most Common House Rules

[Firebeetle]

The NOT QUITE DEAD YET House Rule:

I have yet to actually implement this in a game, but tell me what you think:

If a blow is going to kill a character, i mean, the dice are rolled, the damage is done, the axe is about to drop, there's no frickin' way out of it...the DM asks the player, "Do you want death, or irrevocable maiming and damage and the chance you'll die anyway?"

This is a good opportunity to house rule events like dismemberment, such as when Vader cut Luke's hand off. Or permanent drops of 4 points Cha and Con as the player is mutilated, and never quite the same again as they hang onto a few threads of life. If nothing else it would be an interesting roleplaying scenario, and something a gaming group would never forget.

Yoink. New rule. Finally a chance to use that "Torn Asunder" book by Bastion.

 

[Nebulous]

You should spin that off into another thread so we can discuss it more.

Done and done.

 

[Space Coyote]

Ooh, I like that. I'm always worried about lethality. I don't want to have a player invest a lot of time and effort into building up a character, only to have them die from a freak critical hit. But at the same time, if they don't feel threatened it won't be as fun. That offers a nice way out of permanant death while keeping the threat. You should spin that off into another thread so we can discuss it more.

Ditto.

 

[Beckett]

House rules commonly found in games I run and adopted by others in my group (these have been scavenged from numerous sources).

AE rules for death and dying: disabled from 0 to -con modifer, dead at -constitution, %con to stabilize.

Characters raised from the dead do not lose a level, but gain a negative level until they level up.

Hit Points: I've gone from random rolls with minimum HP gained equal to half the die (so, a D12 gives you at least 6 HP) to using the Iron Heroes route of 1D4 plus remainder of die (so D10 becomes 1D4+6, D12 is 1D4+8).

Feats: More of them, in some way. I had been doing bonus feats at 2nd, and every four levels after, in addition to the standard every 3. For my Age of Worms game, characters get a feat every even level, with the option of 1 or 2 bonus feats taken sometime before 5th level if they go with a lower stat character.

Damage Reduction: Medium armor grants DR 1/-, Heavy Armor grants DR 2/-. A slight advantage to make up for the reduced movement. Also, all damage reduction stacks. So, a barbarian with DR 1/- wearing a breastplate would have a DR 2/-. A fighter in full plate with a stoneskin spell is DR 10/adamantine and DR 2/-; damage is first reduced by the stoneskin, then by the armor. It seemed silly to me that a 7th barbarian in an adamantine breastplate would have the same DR as a fighter in an adamantine breastplate. In theory, a character could pile on a lot of DR, but in practice, this hasn't happened. Also, as the potential for high DR rises, so does the average damage of monsters.

Tumble and Casting Defensively: The base DC for these is 15 or the enemy's attack bonus, whichever is higher.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Most common house rules eh?

Well, with that in mind, and therefore no implied recommendation of the following. . . :

(in no particular order)..

No gnomes
No alignments
Alignments, but no class alignment restrictions
No gods
No favoured classes
Half-Elves get a bonus (what this is varies somewhat)
Elves changed in flavour, possibly in mechanics
Action Points (or something like them)
Dodge being +1 AC against any number of opponents
Armour as DR (or half DR and half AC)
Class Defence Bonus
Sorcerers with Eschew Material Components
Sorcerers with d6 HP
Sorcerers with 4+Int skp
Sorcerers with bonus feats
Draconic Sorcerers
'Bloodline' sorcerers (several kinds usually)
Sorcerers with the spell level progression of a Wizard (1st, 3rd, 5th etc.)
Faster feat attainment for all characters
More skill points for all characters
Rangers with animal companion that advances as a Druid of equal level -3 (like a Paladin's turning, in other words)
Rangers with d10 HD
Rangers with no spellcasting
Rangers with no animal companion
Rangers with more combat style options (i.e., other than TWF or Archery)
Slightly altered Massive Damage threshold(s)
Checks required to cast spells
Critical effects and/or critical fumbles and/or skill check criticals (either way, or both ways)
HP as 1/2 HD each level (except 1st), or the better side of average, or 3/4 HD (keeping fractions)
Fractional BAB
Fractional saves
Spell Focus giving a +2 bonus, not +1
No Monk, or alt.Monk
Scrapping the named '+2 to two skills' feats
Power Attack with 2-handed weapons only gives 1.5 x amount of attack sacrificed in extra damage (not 2x)

 

[Plane Sailing]

I tend to introduce campaign-specific house rules to give each campaign a particular flavour, but I'll not go into those here. There are only two rules that so far have been universally agreed amongst all our DMs

1. No 2-for-1 power attack for 2H weapons.
That seemed stupid when it was introduced and stupid now. 2H weapons already benefit from bigger damage and 1.5 * str bonus, there is no point to ramping the damage for them up even more!

2. expanded disabled and dying range.
Specifically, from 0 to (-level) you are disabled, from (-level) to (-level + Con) you are dying, and dead beyond that.

So a 12 Con 1st level character will be disabled at 0 to -1, dying at -2 to -13 and dead beyond that.

A 14 Con 12th level character will be disabled at 0 to -12, dying at -13 to -26 and dead beyond that.

This rule has (a) kept PCs alive much longer, otherwise it would be dead PCs every other week, and (b) the greatly expanded dying range makes things much more cinematic.

Cheers

 

[der_kluge]

I am considering a house rule on falling damage, to make it more dangerous. I have seen some where you take 1d6 per 10' Cumulative. For example:

10' = 1d6
20' = 1d6 + 2d6 = 3d3
30' = 1d6 + 2d6 + 3d6 = 6d6
etc.

In this case, the first 1d6 would only be subdual damage, though. Has anyone seen this in play?

Last game I played in used this rule. That was in Castles and Crusades, so it's possible that that is the default rule there. I don't know off hand. It could have just been a house rule, though.

 

[Infiniti2000]

from (-level) to (-level + Con) you are dying

Don't you mean (-level -Con)?

 

[Infiniti2000]

Last game I played in used this rule. That was in Castles and Crusades, so it's possible that that is the default rule there. I don't know off hand. It could have just been a house rule, though.

It was the rule in 1e. It was changed to be less deadly, perhaps, though I've also heard people suggest it was changed to be easier to calculate.

One I toyed with was leave it at 1d6/10ft, but require a Fort save of DC 1/10ft or die (broken neck or the like).

 

[Stalker0]

One I toyed with was leave it at 1d6/10ft, but require a Fort save of DC 1/10ft or die (broken neck or the like).

There's already the massive damage fort save...on average you have to deal 14-15 d6 of damage to provoke it, so a drop of 140 feat. You could always say if you take 25 damage from falling or something like that.