Scary Tales from the Game Table: The House Rule that Wouldn’t Die!

[willpax]

I'm not sure I play D&D any more. . .

Combat: VP/WP, armor does 1/2 AC and 1/2 DR (but only on wound damage, which may be the d20 modern system, more or less), everyone can freely shift attack bonuses to defense against one melee opponent (expertise allows you to defend against 2 melee opponents, and so on).

World: a metal-poor, magic-rare world means that many items cost more, and magic items are exhorbitant. I make up for that by expanding the masterwork/high quality metals system to have enhanced weapons that aren't magical (they are expensive and rare, however).

Classes: everyone has more skill points, no monks, paladins, rangers, sorcerors or wizards; added scholar (who can be magically talented), WoT woodsman and aristocrat (modified).

Races: tweaked dwarves and halflings, banned elves, gnomes, half orcs etc. Added a new race of dragon-men.

Magic: reworked magic system from the ground up, using a combination of feats (in magical schools) and skills (of flexible application--for example, all fire spells can be cast using same skill). Spells are powered by vitality points (for arcane) or power points (created by ritual prayer of people with divine gifts).

And the normal assortment of skill and feat tweaks, including beefing up skill focus.

Of course, I wouldn't have had time to do any of this if I actually got to play regularly.

 

[Lela]

wow.. and my players rise up in revolt a the notion of the Critical Success / Failure variant for skill checks.

I ended up comprimising on this w/ my players. On a nat 20, they get to add 10 to the final result. This just means they had a large amount of luck/divine blessings on their side when they did it. And a 1 still fails. The fact is that, regardless of how good you are at something, sometimes your just thinking about that hot elf you saw earlier or happened to be blinking at the wrong time. Think of it as that occational bad luck that happens to the best of us (not just a saying).

They went with it, but they usually roll well anyway. I'm thinking of pulling the double-20-auto-kill rule. I mean twice in one battle is just too much.

 

[Jerrid Al-Kundo]

Heck, my group's used Crit Suc/Fail since 2E... Would be the same if we dropped it. We just handle it same as combat (make 2nd Roll to confirm).

We also use opposed checks for everything, handled as d20+(DC-10). Even the our rules are written as such (using DC? Drop the d20 and add 10 ). We even use Defense Rolls instead of static AC (take 10 to defend during the same "time" you are performing a multitude of other things? heh...), Attack Rolls to oppose Tumble checks, and so on...

Even when Taking 10 or Taking 20, we still roll just to make sure the character didn't f'it up with a 1.

 

[ForceUser]

I'm trying to minimize house rules in my current campaign and play D&D "by-the-book." Even so, they rear their ugly heads on occasion. The few house rules I use are in-game to make my players happy, or because I saw it as an absolute necessity.