'Standard' House Rules?

[Phototoxin]

FAO Mods, I'm posting a sister thread in 3.x edition forum.

Basically my parents visited and brought my old RPG books with them -including my heavily battered AD&D PHB and DMG (Didn't have monster manuals back in Ireland when I was a kid ), my 3.X collection (FRCG, OA, BOVD) & V:tM.

I have many fond memories of AD&D and was just wondering - are there any 'standard' or 'almost universally adopted' house rules to make it run smoother/better/faster/harder?

The internet didn't exist in rural Ireland in AD&D era so I have no experience of discussing it on t'internet.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Hm, it's been quite a while for me, but I think a good chunk of the 2e crowd ignored racial level limits. After all, how do you think Richard's going to react when his elven mage hits 15th level, and you tell him he's maxed out while Sue's half-elven bard has 30th level potential? (Protip: this is how friendships are ended! )

Everyone in my group played demihumans because our DM didn't bother giving humans any kind of advantage, but I hear other DMs would give humans a 10% XP boost and/or give demihumans only half XP beyond their level limits.

 

[Phototoxin]

Hmm that makes sense alright.

Also I've played a lot of Baldurs gate 2 - what are the books with the kit descriptions in them?

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Those would be the Complete Handbooks; the Complete Fighter's Handbook, the Complete Ninja's Handbook, and so on.

 

[GreyLord]

Hm, it's been quite a while for me, but I think a good chunk of the 2e crowd ignored racial level limits. After all, how do you think Richard's going to react when his elven mage hits 15th level, and you tell him he's maxed out while Sue's half-elven bard has 30th level potential? (Protip: this is how friendships are ended! )

Everyone in my group played demihumans because our DM didn't bother giving humans any kind of advantage, but I hear other DMs would give humans a 10% XP boost and/or give demihumans only half XP beyond their level limits.

Most of those I know utilized Demi-human limits for EXACTLY WHAT YOU SAID. If you didn't, there was no real advantages Humans had. Lower levels had Demi-human advantages all over the place, but higher levels is where they suffered. If DM's didn't restrict levels, normally they put it that Demi-humans needed four times the XP past level limits.

A few I knew didn't use Demi-Human limits, mostly were new guys and apparently those at WotC, but overall...most I knew used Level limits.

Universal houserules...hmmm....

Most didn't use weapon speeds religiously...and NWP were kind of sporadic depending on the DM. I think most didn't not allow Psionics, though Psionics were not in the core rules.

The books with the main kits would be

Complete Fighter
Complete Wizards
Complete Priests
Complete thief
Complete Druid
Complete Ranger
Complete Bard
Complete Elf
Complete Dwarf

Some of the other books had new classes and options for those classes as well.

One common rule but NOT STANDARD AT ALL OR BY A LONG SHOT was that many of the older players who started with 1e did not allow anything outside core, aka...no kits.

However...a majority of the newer players I think, as well as many of the older ones DID use kits.

 

[billd91]

2e was pretty nice in that several of the newer rules were called out as optional rules (non-weapon proficiencies, variations on initiative), so they, in effect, became standard house rules in themselves.

I put together a few documents of house rules back in my 2e days. After comparing the 2e ranger with the paladin, I concluded that the ranger was simply too weak to be on the same XP track as the paladin. So I offered a couple of options - 1) put the ranger on the fighter XP track, 2) keep the ranger where he was but allow him to specialize in one weapon (I allowed fighters to specialize in 2). The weakness of the ranger's favored enemy was also problematic so I defined the monster types wider.

 

[Ratskinner]

FAO Mods, I'm posting a sister thread in 3.x edition forum.

Basically my parents visited and brought my old RPG books with them -including my heavily battered AD&D PHB and DMG (Didn't have monster manuals back in Ireland when I was a kid ), my 3.X collection (FRCG, OA, BOVD) & V:tM.

I have many fond memories of AD&D and was just wondering - are there any 'standard' or 'almost universally adopted' house rules to make it run smoother/better/faster/harder?

The internet didn't exist in rural Ireland in AD&D era so I have no experience of discussing it on t'internet.

hmmm..many moons have passed.

I don't know if there was a "universally adopted" approach to it, but as others have mentioned, the demi-human limits and restrictions were always a matter of contention.

Illusions and "disbelieving" were another thing that had to be addressed at every table, but I'm not sure there was broad consensus on exactly how that was dealt with.

Almost everyone I ever played with adopted NWPs, kits, and the stuff from the "complete" handbooks, although some weren't worth the time.

I seem to recall that there was some quirk of XP of something that often got patched over or handwaved, but I don't recall what it was.

Other than that, I don't think there were very many "universally adopted" rules. One of that editions strengths was that each campaign or DM could tailor the experience with a raft of houserules (and often had to, to make sense of spells and their interactions.) At least, if one considers that a strength.