My house rules document, looking for input
- Thread starter calypso15
- Start date
Emirikol
Adventurer
Calypso,
Thanks for posting your house rules for review. Here are my thoughts:
1. TITLE PAGE. Add one. I would include: world name, a blurb about the world, your name and contact information for players (because you expect them to print this out right?) The title page should also include a VERSION by DATE rather than A/B/C or some meanless version number.
2. FORMATTING: Use 2 columns after your title page. You're wasting paper by putting one column and you noted one of your goals was to cut back on pages. The index is hard to reference when you are in single column format.
3. FORMATTING: I would use the same order of rules as the players handbook. Have your chapters the same as the PHB too (e.g. ability scores, race, class, skills, feats, eq, etc.) Your players will appreciate it more
4. THEME: Why are these house rules here? Is there something so different about your game that these rules exist? I've found that players hate house rules just for house rules' sake (unless they're really shallow people). You don't need 10 paragraphs for each house rule, but if it varies from D&D it should be justified.
5. THE CAMPAIGN SETTING: You do NOT need to detail your entire world to players, however you should note something about it that makes it different from every other generic Greyhawk-like world out there. If it is in Greyhawk or the Realms or Ebberrronnn, then say so and have a 1 paragraph write up about where the campaign begins. That will give players something to use as background for their characters. DO NOT WASTE A LOT OF SPACE ON WORLD DETAILS BUT I BELIEVE YOU MUST HAVE A SECTION {emphasis added with caps}
6. I'm going to review your house rules from a "justification" standpoint and question each of them. I'm not going to rehash the same comments everyone else has made. I hope all of this helps you add some FLAVOR to your house rulebook:
7. Basics: "These rules will be updated as necessary."
8. Basics: These house rules exist because....add, "It's relevant to the current campaign." If I were you, I'd forget about making house rules for "BALANCE." You're never going to find it and all you're going to do is confuse your players and they're going to say "This house rulebook is too thick, I'm not reading it, and let's go play something else." I can share from experience and from talking to other DM's (and having been in those types of campaigns where players grumbled behind the DM's back). Balancing also tends to piss off players who feel their characters have been nerfed. If you remove the word "balance" and put "campaign theme" in there instead, players are much more likely to accept your changes.
9. FEATS: Indicate that "this section replaces the PHB chart": New feats, 1, 3, 5, 7, etc. When I first started doing this, I found that players were adding feats twice because I didn't indicate the word REPLACE. I would STOP this bonus around 10th level and go back to normal, otherwise thing REALLY start getting out of hand.
10. SKILLS: I too use this rule. I've simplified it to: All skills are class skills. It's a very common house rule nowdays. This one doesn't require "campaign justification" because it's just more interesting for players!
11. Intelligence retroactive bonus: I think this is an unnecessary rule.
12. Favored Class: Excellent choice in dumping this D&D rule. It's always been a stupid holdover from first edition.
12.5. MULTICLASSING: just make a note here that say's, all classes may multiclass freely. You don't need to note it for each of the classes.
13. HALF-ELF: Is it really that game breaking that you need these rules?
14: HALF-ORC: What is the campaign justification for this? Are half-orcs really that much more attractive in your game? Perhaps a simpler rule "-2 to all charisma based skill checks."
15: Half-orc weapon familiarity: if you're going to do this for half-orcs, why not just say "all racial weapons are proficient by the race. Humans get bastard sword.
16. Use magic device: Dump this house rule unless you're thinking there is some specific campaign reason why you need to change it or if it's been incredibly abused in your past campaigns.
17. Ability score choice for spellcasters: Not that I don't like this rule, but why does it exist? Why charisma? WHy not just say, "your choice across the board int, wisdom or cha for ANY spellcaster." There's no reason not to include wisdom for arcane or int for divine if you're just changing rules.
18. Barbarian, druid, bard alignment updates: I think this is a good rule, but just put it in a general section rather than taking up space on every line. ALIGNMENT: bbn, drd, brd , mnk are not restricted by alignment. BTW, do you allow evil alignments in your games? Might want to make a note.
19. Bard: what level do you EXPECT your campaigns will go up to. I'd make sure that I wasn't making high level house rule changes unless they are absolutely necessary. Personally, I cap all campaigns at about 12th anyways. Are these bard house rules absolutely necessary? Have they been a problem in the past? Are you expecting players to play bards?
20. Are you nerfing clerics for campaign reasons or personal reasons? I hate clerics too, but have a campaign reason. Are the gods weaker in your world? Are level-drain monsters more prevalent against the gods and that's why the cleric get's resilient spirit? What exactly are clerics in your game? Are they holy warriors, temple guards or what? I think a wiser approach would be to give them one of two options: PRIEST (lose armor, lose fort, gain feats, +1 bonus spell per level OR SOMETHING), CLERIC (lose automatic heavy armor proficiency) ----FOR EXAMPLE. Each of the three could have specific changes rather than your current system, which seems kind of scattered.
21: My opinion for both clerics and druids: dump the unearthed arcana spontaneous caster house rule. Nobody's going to use it.
22. Fighter: have you playtested these yet? I'd skip them all. Your bonus feats already make the fighter plenty powerful.
23. Ranger - good changes
24. Rogue: why would a rogue use ruinous strike? It deals half-as much damage as a sneak and with no critical?
25. Sounds like you're beefing up arcanes. That's a sure-fire way to turn your game into a powermongering mess. If you want to do anything, I would consider making lower-level arcanes more powerful, but DO NOT bump them for anything beyond 5th level. Give them extra spells or somethign for low level and then leave them alone. I guarantee you're going to have a wizard/sor dominating the game otherwise and then have fighters and others saying "I need armor +5 and hammer of thunderbolts at 10th level just to keep up witht he wizard." Not that these aren't neat rules, but just be careful.
26. Shields: Wow, I really like this rule!
27. Stabilization rule: are you afraid to kill PC's off? You could save a lot of trouble and worry by just having a better "back up character rule." Say, "PC's will die. Have a back-up character ready."
28. Turn undead: I suggest really reducing the text here or use a pre-published rule like "turning damage." There's way too much verbage here. I'm going to DUMP turn undead in my games. All it does is guarantee that a DM needs to throw more undead at his group and do unnecessary math.
29. New feats: if these are from a book somewhere, just reference them. If the player doesn't have the book, he can't get the feat.
Overall, I can see that you are looking to "balance the game." Not that it isn't meritorious, but typically it just creates a nightmare of tangled webs of rules. I'd ditch the ones that your players don't say "yea, love that rule."
You could also use some simple artwork. Stick some on there from the web..no the gestapo aren't coming after you if you do...
Now that I've done a thorough review of your book, I'd appreciate if you'd take a look at mine and make some comments too
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=202011
Thanks,
Jay H
Thanks for posting your house rules for review. Here are my thoughts:
1. TITLE PAGE. Add one. I would include: world name, a blurb about the world, your name and contact information for players (because you expect them to print this out right?) The title page should also include a VERSION by DATE rather than A/B/C or some meanless version number.
2. FORMATTING: Use 2 columns after your title page. You're wasting paper by putting one column and you noted one of your goals was to cut back on pages. The index is hard to reference when you are in single column format.
3. FORMATTING: I would use the same order of rules as the players handbook. Have your chapters the same as the PHB too (e.g. ability scores, race, class, skills, feats, eq, etc.) Your players will appreciate it more
4. THEME: Why are these house rules here? Is there something so different about your game that these rules exist? I've found that players hate house rules just for house rules' sake (unless they're really shallow people). You don't need 10 paragraphs for each house rule, but if it varies from D&D it should be justified.
5. THE CAMPAIGN SETTING: You do NOT need to detail your entire world to players, however you should note something about it that makes it different from every other generic Greyhawk-like world out there. If it is in Greyhawk or the Realms or Ebberrronnn, then say so and have a 1 paragraph write up about where the campaign begins. That will give players something to use as background for their characters. DO NOT WASTE A LOT OF SPACE ON WORLD DETAILS BUT I BELIEVE YOU MUST HAVE A SECTION {emphasis added with caps}
6. I'm going to review your house rules from a "justification" standpoint and question each of them. I'm not going to rehash the same comments everyone else has made. I hope all of this helps you add some FLAVOR to your house rulebook:
7. Basics: "These rules will be updated as necessary."
8. Basics: These house rules exist because....add, "It's relevant to the current campaign." If I were you, I'd forget about making house rules for "BALANCE." You're never going to find it and all you're going to do is confuse your players and they're going to say "This house rulebook is too thick, I'm not reading it, and let's go play something else." I can share from experience and from talking to other DM's (and having been in those types of campaigns where players grumbled behind the DM's back). Balancing also tends to piss off players who feel their characters have been nerfed. If you remove the word "balance" and put "campaign theme" in there instead, players are much more likely to accept your changes.
9. FEATS: Indicate that "this section replaces the PHB chart": New feats, 1, 3, 5, 7, etc. When I first started doing this, I found that players were adding feats twice because I didn't indicate the word REPLACE. I would STOP this bonus around 10th level and go back to normal, otherwise thing REALLY start getting out of hand.
10. SKILLS: I too use this rule. I've simplified it to: All skills are class skills. It's a very common house rule nowdays. This one doesn't require "campaign justification" because it's just more interesting for players!
11. Intelligence retroactive bonus: I think this is an unnecessary rule.
12. Favored Class: Excellent choice in dumping this D&D rule. It's always been a stupid holdover from first edition.
12.5. MULTICLASSING: just make a note here that say's, all classes may multiclass freely. You don't need to note it for each of the classes.
13. HALF-ELF: Is it really that game breaking that you need these rules?
14: HALF-ORC: What is the campaign justification for this? Are half-orcs really that much more attractive in your game? Perhaps a simpler rule "-2 to all charisma based skill checks."
15: Half-orc weapon familiarity: if you're going to do this for half-orcs, why not just say "all racial weapons are proficient by the race. Humans get bastard sword.
16. Use magic device: Dump this house rule unless you're thinking there is some specific campaign reason why you need to change it or if it's been incredibly abused in your past campaigns.
17. Ability score choice for spellcasters: Not that I don't like this rule, but why does it exist? Why charisma? WHy not just say, "your choice across the board int, wisdom or cha for ANY spellcaster." There's no reason not to include wisdom for arcane or int for divine if you're just changing rules.
18. Barbarian, druid, bard alignment updates: I think this is a good rule, but just put it in a general section rather than taking up space on every line. ALIGNMENT: bbn, drd, brd , mnk are not restricted by alignment. BTW, do you allow evil alignments in your games? Might want to make a note.
19. Bard: what level do you EXPECT your campaigns will go up to. I'd make sure that I wasn't making high level house rule changes unless they are absolutely necessary. Personally, I cap all campaigns at about 12th anyways. Are these bard house rules absolutely necessary? Have they been a problem in the past? Are you expecting players to play bards?
20. Are you nerfing clerics for campaign reasons or personal reasons? I hate clerics too, but have a campaign reason. Are the gods weaker in your world? Are level-drain monsters more prevalent against the gods and that's why the cleric get's resilient spirit? What exactly are clerics in your game? Are they holy warriors, temple guards or what? I think a wiser approach would be to give them one of two options: PRIEST (lose armor, lose fort, gain feats, +1 bonus spell per level OR SOMETHING), CLERIC (lose automatic heavy armor proficiency) ----FOR EXAMPLE. Each of the three could have specific changes rather than your current system, which seems kind of scattered.
21: My opinion for both clerics and druids: dump the unearthed arcana spontaneous caster house rule. Nobody's going to use it.
22. Fighter: have you playtested these yet? I'd skip them all. Your bonus feats already make the fighter plenty powerful.
23. Ranger - good changes
24. Rogue: why would a rogue use ruinous strike? It deals half-as much damage as a sneak and with no critical?
25. Sounds like you're beefing up arcanes. That's a sure-fire way to turn your game into a powermongering mess. If you want to do anything, I would consider making lower-level arcanes more powerful, but DO NOT bump them for anything beyond 5th level. Give them extra spells or somethign for low level and then leave them alone. I guarantee you're going to have a wizard/sor dominating the game otherwise and then have fighters and others saying "I need armor +5 and hammer of thunderbolts at 10th level just to keep up witht he wizard." Not that these aren't neat rules, but just be careful.
26. Shields: Wow, I really like this rule!
27. Stabilization rule: are you afraid to kill PC's off? You could save a lot of trouble and worry by just having a better "back up character rule." Say, "PC's will die. Have a back-up character ready."
28. Turn undead: I suggest really reducing the text here or use a pre-published rule like "turning damage." There's way too much verbage here. I'm going to DUMP turn undead in my games. All it does is guarantee that a DM needs to throw more undead at his group and do unnecessary math.
29. New feats: if these are from a book somewhere, just reference them. If the player doesn't have the book, he can't get the feat.
Overall, I can see that you are looking to "balance the game." Not that it isn't meritorious, but typically it just creates a nightmare of tangled webs of rules. I'd ditch the ones that your players don't say "yea, love that rule."
You could also use some simple artwork. Stick some on there from the web..no the gestapo aren't coming after you if you do...
Now that I've done a thorough review of your book, I'd appreciate if you'd take a look at mine and make some comments too
http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=202011 Thanks,
Jay H
White Whale
First Post
I skimmed through your pdf:
The only campaign defining changes are the death/dying, resurrection magic and reserve points. I like these changes.
For the rest I am tempted to say: "don't fix it if it ain't broken"...
The only campaign defining changes are the death/dying, resurrection magic and reserve points. I like these changes.
For the rest I am tempted to say: "don't fix it if it ain't broken"...
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