D&D 4E My 4e House Rules - Yours?

[fletch137]

I've dabbled with a few house rules, but the only two I'm adamant about are:

1) No level bonuses to attribute checks. You can't punch through a marble wall any easier at level 22 than you could at level 2. If you want to get stronger as you level (or smarter or prettier), that's what the stat bumps are for.

B) Percentage bonuses to XP for each additional encounter in the same day. The second encounter before an extended rest gets a bonus 5% to XP, the 3rd gets +10% and so on. This is to reward and encourage pressing on in an adventure rather than retreating to home base to recover daily powers.

Other houserules I've considered involve wound recovery and extended crafting rules, but I'm not committed to them.

 

[Taed]

1) No level bonuses to attribute checks. You can't punch through a marble wall any easier at level 22 than you could at level 2. If you want to get stronger as you level (or smarter or prettier), that's what the stat bumps are for.

The way I think of that isn't that you're any stronger or tougher, but more skilled as a natural part of training. For example, I would expect that a karate black belt could break through a 2"x4" MUCH easier than a novice. Same thinking goes with hit points, though realistically, I wouldn't think that a karate black belt (call them 30th level) would be able to take 3x or 4x the blows/damage that a novice could before dying (though that's certainly how it works in the movies).

 

[Ryujin]

The way I think of that isn't that you're any stronger or tougher, but more skilled as a natural part of training. For example, I would expect that a karate black belt could break through a 2"x4" MUCH easier than a novice. Same thinking goes with hit points, though realistically, I wouldn't think that a karate black belt (call them 30th level) would be able to take 3x or 4x the blows/damage that a novice could before dying (though that's certainly how it works in the movies).

Except that in game world rules you are both stronger, and tougher. The explanation of how this is mirrored in the game world is an easy one. At level 1 you're breaking down doors made of 1/4", rotten plywood. At 11th level you're body-blocking through 6" thick, iron-bound castle gates. At 21st level you're flying through planes of dimensional force, that just happen to look like adamantine throne room doors.

At 22nd level you're dealing with extra-dimensional, godlike beings. You, yourself are no longer merely mortal.

 

[C4]

What is the one square bubble and its problem?

The 'bubble' is when you knock an opponent prone, and then shift back 1 square [or push the opponent 1]. On your opponent's turn, he can stand up but can't attack you. (Moving adjacent to you requires burning a second Move, and charging requires 2+ squares.)

It's like a cheap way to stun your enemy that doesn't make sense as part of the rules or the game world. "Quick, everyone stand exactly 2 meters from the bad guy so he can't attack!"

 

[fjw70]

My main house rules involve the pace of the game in 4E:

1. Encounters don't end until I decide they do.
2. The day doesn't end until I decide it does.

My games are very story-based, and I frequently have a bunch of roleplaying with maybe one fight in the day. I got tired very early on of watching players just blow through my one fight using 34435 dailies. Similarly, I got annoyed that I couldn't just throw two guards at a party in a dungeon to whittle down some of their resources, so instead I started saying things like "Until you finish this wing of the dungeon, it's all one encounter."

I find 4E's main problem is the cookie-cutter mold of X monsters = an encounter, and X fights = a day, so changing encounter to "scene" and daily to "chapter" has worked very well for me.

I have recently considered something like this. How is it working so far?

The way I was going to do it was that you everyday was one encounter and you had to rest for at least a week to get an extended rest.

 

[D'karr]

I have recently considered something like this. How is it working so far?

The way I was going to do it was that you everyday was one encounter and you had to rest for at least a week to get an extended rest.

Before you decide to "fix" extended rests you should clearly define what it is you are trying to "fix" and more importantly why it needs fixing. I cover this at length in this article at Loremaster.org

For example is the problem with "extended" rests the time needed, or the fact that you recover all adventuring resources (surges, daily resources)?

What it seems you are trying to fix might not be fixable by increasing time. If the problem you are trying to fix is the shortness of the adventuring day, decreasing the adventuring resources simply puts you in an opposite spiral to what you are attempting to do.

If your problem is that adventuring resources are recovered then you need to determine why that is bothersome. Because the problem you will "create" on the other side is to continue to "shorten" the day.

If you are able to clearly define what your "problem" boils down to, then you can come up with an appropriate manner of house-ruling the issue.

I have several "situational" house rules for my games. They are situational because I don't want to apply them to every adventure or every situation due to pacing concerns. I have house rules for short term injury, long term injury, and even for faster recovery of resources. All of them are based on the pacing that I want a particular adventure to have. But they were all defined based on the "problem" that the rules did not address properly. I had to make sure that I was defining the problem properly before I came up with "solutions" to that problem.

 

[fjw70]

Before you decide to "fix" extended rests you should clearly define what it is you are trying to "fix" and more importantly why it needs fixing. I cover this at length in this article at Loremaster.org

For example is the problem with "extended" rests the time needed, or the fact that you recover all adventuring resources (surges, daily resources)?

What it seems you are trying to fix might not be fixable by increasing time. If the problem you are trying to fix is the shortness of the adventuring day, decreasing the adventuring resources simply puts you in an opposite spiral to what you are attempting to do.

If your problem is that adventuring resources are recovered then you need to determine why that is bothersome. Because the problem you will "create" on the other side is to continue to "shorten" the day.

If you are able to clearly define what your "problem" boils down to, then you can come up with an appropriate manner of house-ruling the issue.

I have several "situational" house rules for my games. They are situational because I don't want to apply them to every adventure or every situation due to pacing concerns. I have house rules for short term injury, long term injury, and even for faster recovery of resources. All of them are based on the pacing that I want a particular adventure to have. But they were all defined based on the "problem" that the rules did not address properly. I had to make sure that I was defining the problem properly before I came up with "solutions" to that problem.

I am not considering this change because my player’s rest too much. I have good players that rest at appropriate times. The issue is that even when resting appropriately resources recover too quickly. I like combat to have a significant element of danger and in 4e each battle needs to be really tough to have any significant element of danger since after combat is over almost everything resets and the party is none the worse off going into the next battle. Of course surges will eventually run out but it takes many battles before that happens.

The concept is to make every day one long encounter and make daily resources only usable once per adventure (or adventure part for longer adventures). The amount of rest required for the extended rest is a little fuzzy. At least a few days and possibly up to a week.

By extending the encounter resource recovery frequency then encounter building can be more flexible. For example, if one day is a single encounter then the encounter budget can be spread throughout many rooms of a dungeon. After fighting a couple standard monsters in one room powers and hp don’t automatically reset for the next fight.

Also if the party is traveling then the one fight per day of travel doesn’t need to be a massive knockdown drag-out with all resources refreshing overnight. After a couple weeks of traveling through monster infested territory the PCs will need to rest for a few days to get an extended rest instead of ending the journey as fresh as it began.

I am open to thoughts on the idea. Please bring up any problems that I may have overlooked. Like I said I am not worried about shortening the work day. My players are better than that.

 

[AntiStateQuixote]

Also if the party is traveling then the one fight per day of travel doesn’t need to be a massive knockdown drag-out with all resources refreshing overnight. After a couple weeks of traveling through monster infested territory the PCs will need to rest for a few days to get an extended rest instead of ending the journey as fresh as it began.

This bit I like, other parts not so much.

My solution to the "one random encounter per day of travel" problem was to just not allow extended rests in hostile territory unless they spent a significant effort securing shelter. By doing this we have a week (or whatever) of travel that amounts to a "day" of adventuring for the purposes of daily power, surge expenditures.

I don't do this often, but when the drama calls for it, it's on.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I often have a journey be a day or two of travel, even if it is weeks long.

To me, it makes the travel far more dangerous, while sticking with 4E's expected playstyle.

 

[Grimmjow]

i also don't have my characters lose encounter and daily powers when they level up no replacing just gaining new ones