Most Common House Rules

[glass]

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.

In my current gestalt game, we have been rolling both HD and taking the better one (with a minimum of half the lower die).

EDIT: Although I don't know if that is at all common, but almost everyone else seems to be ignoring that particular stipulation too!


glass.

 

[Frostmarrow]

Another variant diplomacy rule

I have begun using a variant diplomacy check-rule in my Red Hand of Doom-campaign.

Whenever there is a social encounter, which starts with a player addressing an NPC, I ask all players present to roll diplomacy. The winner gets the attention of the NPC.

Sure, the rest of the players can add comments but the main discussion will be between the winner and the NPC. The player's attitude and up front role-playing will decide if the NPC is friendly or hostile or anything inbetween. (I allow the winner's check result to influence this too).

The upside is that no player can depend on someone else doing all the talking. Also, this means that all players will have to keep up to date on the plot since once in awhile all eyes will be on them. It also means that if you have lots of ranks in diplomacy you will win attention more often.

I plan to allow players to roll bluff, intimidate, or perform in lieu of diplomacy but in such cases demand that the winner, if using intimidate, must be threatening in one way or another. By the same token a bluffer must lie or otherwise impress and a perfomer must aim to entertain.

I have used it for two sessions. The first time I used it the player who initiated the encounter felt it was weird someone else got the attention but by the second session I think the players realise what it is I'm doing and why. When the campaign is finished I'll ask them what they think.

 

[jeffh]

I would say the most common types of house rules (all of which I use some version of) are almost certainly:

• More generous and/or more consistent ways of determining hit points
• Relaxation or removal of multiclassing restrictions
• Increasing the availability of skills (more class skills and/or more skill points)
• Removing, raising in level or depowering certain extremely powerful and/or arguably out-of-genre spells (Raise Dead, Polymorph and Teleport, along with their cousins, being the most common victims).

Honourable mention to making dying something other than "-10hp = dead", and perhaps to removing alignment or relaxing alignment restrictions on classes (especially the bard), as well as incorporating an ASP mechanic such as action points.

Others will vary considerably from one game to the next, but the four general categories I bulleted seem to be about as common as the by-the-book rules they replace.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

I had a similar experience to Der Kluge and now one of my table rules is to keep the house rules to a bare minimum - important stuff that everyone can rattle off.

Sure there are lots of little things that bug me but unless someone takes a real issue to we're just gonna have to handle it. So that all said here are our houserules:

1) Endless rerolls using the organic method, but you have to write them all down and cry a river between each reroll he he, just like the original howliebag did (me!)
2) No animated shields because someone cared about something
3) Reducing hd rerolls

I can't think of any more off hand... fly-to-featherfall may become one if the player concerned really wants it.

 

[Emirikol]

I'd be interested to see your actual house rulebooks (or sheets that you hand out). If you're interested in uploading them (or posting the link), please go here:

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=178906

Afterall, it's one thing to debate the rule, it's completely another to see how you present it to your players in the game.

Thanks,

jh

 

[Owen K.C. Stephens]

Missed this question:
I use the rules from Green Ronin Advanced GM Guide.
<snip>
Though the AGMG doesn't specify, I limit ability scores to 18 before racial modifiers, and only allow one of each benefit.

Although I didn't intend for either of those limitations to be built into the system, I think they're fine and reasonable additions that might well make a lot of people happier with the system overall.

Nice idea!

 

[Psimancer]

• No Favoured Classes.

• Half Elves: 4 extra skill points at 1st level and 1 extra skill point at each additional level.

• Climb: Str or Dex based (players choice).

• Catch yourself (or another) while falling (DC = Wall’s DC +5).

• Diplomacy: Rich Burlew rules.

• Intimidate: Cha or Str based (players choice).

• Use Magical Device: Characters may Take 10.

• Dodge: AC bonus versus All enemies.

• Improved Critical stacks with Keen.

• Fate Points: Re-roll d20 instead of +1d6.

• Charge: Standard action; movement (for this action only) must be in a straight line.

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

I've seen this before (and liked the concept); anyone know where it comes from originally? Found it...

Edit: If anybody is interested in reading the details of this HR, check out the Andy Collins Website.

__________________

 

[Psion]

Although I didn't intend for either of those limitations to be built into the system, I think they're fine and reasonable additions that might well make a lot of people happier with the system overall.

Nice idea!

Thanks for chiming in.

Actually, the example in the book has multiple instances of abilities since it is from multiple free ECL. But since I am only allowing one, I thought that was a pretty safe way to 1) make a tangible difference between races and 2) prevent some possible abuses of the system.

 

[frankthedm]

Wow, guess I am the only one who made the 18-20 x2 crit weapons one step larger damage die and 19-20 x2 crit.

Sure they are balanced at low levels, though once damage bonuses start mattering more than the rolls, the 1 point less damage does not outweight the crits racking up.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

The NOT QUITE DEAD YET House Rule:

I like this , too. I'm trying to work on a similar idea - spurred by the Skulls & Bones system, which has a kind of "nine lives" thing. You can get scars, either scary or not, loss of limbs (IIRC), etc.

My idea is to enact action dice, as in Unerthed Arcana, and allow a certain number of killing blows to be turned into potentially interesting defects. This will allow me to turn my monsters totally loose, not worrying about fudging (because they won't die from a lucky crit) and such.