D&D 4E My 4e House Rules that have nothing to do with 1-2-1 movement

[PeelSeel2]

It's a deeply intellectual thing to discuss too. 1-1-1 or 1-2-1. It's almost better than actually playing the game. And it affects so much in the game besides the obvious: movement, slide, push, pull, and shift. If I say to to one of my players "Hey Roger, slide the Cheeto's over" I have said the wrong thing, because a slide could go in any direction. Layer my misuse of a term, Roger want to taunt me with sliding the bag away from me, and us playing with either one of the complicated movement octagonal squared note equivalence's 1-1-2-1-23-1 or 1-1-10-100, and I could have a real problem. I might have to spend a standard action to get the bag pushed back at me ("Thanks *&% for sliding it away from me. Hey John, could I get you to push that bag towards me?), and depending on which type of movement system I used, it might not make it because their is diagonal movement involved. I might have to wait for my initiative to come back up to get John to push the bag some more for me so it is in my reach. In the meantime, Terry has just become away of Cheeto's on the table and has beat me in initiative order; and he has reach. I may never get the Cheetos now.

This issue affects millions of gamers. If you elect me Presidente Rules Lawyery, I promise to look deeply into the issue and bring a law suit against WOTC for confussing the situation for even suggesting blah movement in the first place. Either Movement system is so War gamist and WOWish. On behalf of you, my constituents, I would propose an alternate movement system that is more accurate and will end all controversy, finally. It is, drum roll please........

1-1.15-1-1.85. It takes care the realistic extra reach problem with reach 2 or 3 in a 1-1-1 or 1-2-1 environment. Brilliant!! And I thought of that without a Guiness!! I'm on a roll!! The Rouse, if you are out their, YOU ARE ON NOTICE!!! I'm gunning for your job. When your peers see the simple brilliance of my 1-1.15-1-1.85, you are outta their! Errr, how much does a new lead designer on 4e make? Also I want to talk with Bill about some other minor changes before print.

 

[Jack99]

edit: We also modified the death and dying rules. We do not keep track of negatives any more. We call negatives the 'dying' condition. 3 Failed saves and your dead. Rolling a 1 on a save counts as two failed saves. Every time you get hit when you are dying counts as a failed save. It is a bit more vicious, but we tend to go for that style of play.

You say that you do not keep track of negatives. Does that mean that a fighter with 65 hps can be knocked to -40 and still not die until he misses 3 saves? Or do you mean that you don't count -6, -7, -8 etc, every round? If so, that's not in the rules, so not a houserule.The dying condition that you describe, is just how it is by the rules we have seen.

Personally, I think I will include your "1 = two steps down"-houserule (i like that one), and I would rule that any damage taken while having the dying condition = death.

Or rather, I will put it on a list. I won't house-rule for a while, I want to see how the game plays as intended.

Cheers

 

[Andre]

This. The best way to learn how a system works is to play it rigorously, not make changes predicated upon on-paper theory.

This brings back memories. I lost count of the number of posts where someone was told they shouldn't houserule 3.x until they had played the RAW thoroughly to be sure they really knew what they were doing. If there were flaws in our experiences with the game, then obviously we didn't understand the rules well enough. After all, the designers obviously know so much more than average gamers, how dare we think we can come up with something better...

Seriously, while I agree that with any new ruleset, we should be careful in applying house rules (unintended consequences and all that), many house rules have little or nothing to do with game balance and everything to do with flavor. And in the end, people house rule not to make a game system "better" (whatever that means) but to meet the needs of the people in a particular gaming group. If a group doesn't like something immediately, there's no reason to suffer through it on the off chance that their change has an even larger negative impact. They can always go back and try the "official" rule later, if they want.

Shoot, I'll houserule Monopoly if that makes the game more fun. In fact, now that I think about it, how about adding ninjas to Monopoly? What they hey, it's worth a shot...

 

[The Human Target]

The only thing I'm sorta considering right now is having the PCs abilities recharge like monster powers do.

So at will powers recharge on a roll of 4-6, encounter powers recharge on a roll of 5-6, and dailies recharge on a 6.

Thats just something I'm kicking around a little.

Its too soon to tell even that really.

 

[JohnDeHope3]

The only thing I'm sorta considering right now is having the PCs abilities recharge like monster powers do.

So at will powers recharge on a roll of 4-6, encounter powers recharge on a roll of 5-6, and dailies recharge on a 6.

Thats just something I'm kicking around a little.

Its too soon to tell even that really.

I was thinking of something similar for a totally different game. But I didn't want to have to roll so often to find out how long it would take. So I had recharges in d4 rounds (for at will), d4+4 rounds (for per encounter), and d8+8 rounds (for per day). This has a few interesting effects. First you only roll once and then you know when you'll be able to use the power (GM or player knows, depending on how you run your game). Second your powers are not necessarily ready on round 1 of ever battle. The # of rounds you have to wait crosses battles. So yeah you might be close to being able to use your big per-day nuke, but close in this case might be 3 rounds... a lot can happen in 3 rounds.

 

[keterys]

It seems odd to give at-wills a recharge.

It seems much more reasonably to roll a recharge _each encounter_ for your used encounter and dailies (remember, if you don't get a short rest you don't get your encounters back). That would further encourage pressing on, cause hey, you might get your daily back anyways.

 

[keterys]

They can always go back and try the "official" rule later, if they want.

If you house rule before trying it, they're rather unlikely to switch, which means they could be operating under a less fun game without even realizing it. I'm still vaguely horrified at some of the weird 'clinging desperately to 1st edition' 3rd edition games someone ran, back in the day.

 

[Andre]

If you house rule before trying it, they're rather unlikely to switch, which means they could be operating under a less fun game without even realizing it. I'm still vaguely horrified at some of the weird 'clinging desperately to 1st edition' 3rd edition games someone ran, back in the day.

I seem to remember a thread or two about how to use multiclassing rules from earlier editions in 3E - I suspect those didn't work out too well...

For me, my house-ruling epiphany was reading about the Mystic Theurge and thinking it was going to rule the world. In actual play, they were mostly "meh".

Personally, I plan to give the full rules a complete read, then try to give the system a fair shot. Of course, if I read something that I really, really can't stand, no promises...

 

[amysrevenge]

Rolling Initiative for multiplie creatures I just took the lowest init. modiifier and used it for all of the creatures in the fight, under the name "Evil". I do the same thing when a group of baddies is trying to hide, etc.

I'm concerned about this one. I know that the damage (relative to total hit points) that can be done (by either the PCs or the bad guys) in a single round is reduced in 4 compared to 3.x, but rolling initiative for all the bad guys in a lump will still result very frequently in either all the bad guys going before any PCs, or all the bad guys going after all the PCs. Either case can drastically affect the difficulty of an encounter. At the very least, I'd split a large group of baddies into 2-3 smaller groups.

 

[Imban]

You say that you do not keep track of negatives. Does that mean that a fighter with 65 hps can be knocked to -40 and still not die until he misses 3 saves? Or do you mean that you don't count -6, -7, -8 etc, every round? If so, that's not in the rules, so not a houserule.The dying condition that you describe, is just how it is by the rules we have seen.

Yeah, from what he said, that's how he wants to run it. Only, well, that's only an issue if the fighter gets knocked from 1 to -40 in one hit - instead of counting negatives, he makes a hit after you're down count as a failed save, so if it's a more reasonable amount of damage, the fighter's likely to take 2 or 3 hits before he'd get there.

I'd want to avoid changing death to any hit while dying, since monsters with damaging auras seem to be awful common in the new edition, and there's not much you can do about that.