Post a Houserule that Failed

[Reynard]

We all have ideas for houserules that are intended to improve fun at the table , help simulate something better than the official rules, and/or improve gameplay. Even with experience with the rulesset and the best of intentions, it doesn't always work.

Post a house rule that you or someone at your table suggested, sounded good, but ultimately turned out all wrong. Note that this isn't for some random DM's horrible, player-nerfing, overcomplicated, DMPC bolstering house rules (though that'd make a good thread, too). Just the ones that were supposed to help/be fun, and ended up not.

Mine -- one that I still have to deal with, sadly -- is "max hit points for all characters at all level." It is a simple thing, and supposed to increase fun by decreasing death, and even allowing the DM (me) to create tougher challenges. Unfortunately, it has never quite worked the way it should. While random hit points can be troublesome if you don't apply a "minimum hit points per level" rule, max hit points has the unintended consequence of sucking up a lot of resources for healing, making combats last a very long time, and generally mussing up the already precarious CR/EL balance. i'd like to drop it in favor of either a less random method, or, say, the RPGA rules on hit points, but most of my players love having full HP.

 

[Nonlethal Force]

I've always found that type of houserule easy to counter. As a DM, I employ a "classed enemies created equal to the PCs" rule.

What this means is that monsters or what-have-you are plucked right out of the MM or wherever, but enemies that I actually make up from base classes and/or races follow the same character creation rules. What this means is that the higher the minimum number of hitpoints the worse it bodes for the players.

Example: Say a group of 4 players has max HP. They're all great and glorious, until they realize that to go up a level they'll have to defeat an average of 13 1/3 encounters ... many of them will also have max HP. Who do you think has the advantage - 4 players or 13 1/3 equally created encounters? My players learned that MAX HP is always a bad thing. We've found a good balance on 75% hit die, round up on an odd level for a class and round down on an even level for a class.

As for failed houe rules of my own? I've yet to see if it pans out, but I instituted several races with pluses and minuses to intelectual stats. Improved casting ensued, of course. I've yet to see if this is a god idea or not.

 

[Evilhalfling]

Requiring a human to take regional feats based on their home country.
Humans seemed to strong in comparison to other races, So I added this. to balance it each region also had four skills that were alway counted as class skills. The skills were rarely used, as most classes still did not have enough points to spread around. The regional feats (mostly +2/+2 skill feats) were useless and humans were still played 2 to 1 over demi-humans.

It officially ended (to the players relief) when I jumped the world 300 yrs forward in time and did not want to re-detail the feats and skills for all the new regions.

 

[jeffh]

I've always been big on using something resembling 2E-style weapon proficiencies (e.g. the Weapon Group feats from UA). That's not the problem as the idea has always gone over well with most of my players. The problem has been some of the ways I've tried to implement it.

In one system, the penalties for using particular weapons you weren't proficient with could be "bought off" with skill points. This favoured the wrong classes and too often turned out to be better than anything else some builds could do with those skill points ("Six skill points for an exotic weapon proficiency feat? Sure, I'll take that"). But mostly it just isn't the sort of thing skill points are supposed to be for.

Later I found what I think is the perfect system for this, at least for me, which I'll likely post here or elsewhere at some point (but it would take some work to rewrite it for standard D&D since it's up to its neck in my other house rules). One feature of this system is that you can take other things besides Weapon and Armour proficiencies through it, including the Open Minded and Toughness feats. So having put this system into place, what do I do the next time I start a game? Try to simplify it.

DOH! One of these days I'll learn, if it works, don't fix it. Someone managed to combine the simplified system with a rewrite of Toughness I decided to try out at the same time to make a first-level character with 24 hit points, by taking my new improved version of Toughness multiple times. This would not have been possible, or at least would have been much costlier for that build, had I stuck closer to the version of this system I'd used previously.

 

[jeffh]

Another one was allowing the psionic classes as written, alongside what was basically the Arcana Evolved magic system. In that context the psis are just way too good, even if I hadn't since come to the conclusion that the psionics rules work best as a game's only magic system.

 

[rom90125]

Psionics killed the campaign I was participating in late last year...

For the campaign I DM, I allowed open spell books and spell points. It didn't become an issue until the PCs had a grudge match and the wizards beotch-smacked the monk in 2 rounds. Then the player running the monk decided that the wide-open spell-system had to go.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Total Thread Hijack

Hey! Rom90125! Another SomaFM fan!! I usually have that playing in the background during my game sessions!!

I now return you to your regularly programmed lives.

 

[WhatGravitas]

My failed houserule:

Facing. The UA variant. First, everybody had fun. Everybody enjoyed it... but slowly, we forgot using it. It just went *poof*, and while it was fun, we ultimately dropped it for being too clunky... the only player who complained a bit was the tabletop wargamer, who loved backstabbing with a rogue.

 

[Kurashu]

My failed house rule?

Give me five dollars.


...Never seemed to work. In fact, I think I ended up giving a player $10.



I kid of course. Although, I'm sure like most groups, we have people pitch in for pizza & soda (or beer if you're old enough).

 

[Ravellion]

About 5 different alt.rangers, because neither me nor my players like either the 3.0 or 3.5 versions.

The solution? To simply only allow the PHB ranger. That means no one will play Rangers, but that at least means I don't have to allow some untested alt.ranger in either