The slippery slope of house rules. When are there too many?

[Afrodyte]

I don't think there's such a thing as too many house rules per se, but I think things get out of hand when you can't explain why you made them in the first place. I tinker with D20 a lot, but I always have in mind what I wanted to accomplish when I adjusted the rules. In addition, I think house rules go too far if the players can't understand why you made them.

(edittid fur spellin n' grammer)

 

[Psion]

I think the most sage advice to be had on this issue is to be had here:

http://www.io.com/~sjohn/funwork.htm

I think that the most poignant example of this for me was a set of chi rules that I was working on, that seemed COOL but were too complicated to be fun.

For similar reasons, I never updated my tome of deities to 3e; it would have been work out of proportion to how much use I got out of it.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

I think house rules go to far if the players can't understand why you made them.

Depending on what you mean by "can't understand," I mildly disagree with this.

My players, for instance, don't really grok why I dislike spell-casting rangers. It doesn't bother them, like it does me, I supect because my own literary background is so much stronger. (I have players that have never read The Lord of the Rings, much less the classics.) However, I had no compunctions about ripping the 3.0 ranger out of my game, despite their lack of understanding at a visceral level why it offended me. It was important to my enjoyment of the game.

On the other hand, they do understand at an intellectual level why it offends me, and they're fine with that.

 

[Nail]

That said, my standard for adding house rules has gradually changed from "oh, that's really cool" all the way to "is living without this house rule really going to bug the hell out of me?"

Me too.

Back in the day, my friends and I completely rewrote 2e D&D. The CHaracter Generation Handbook, we called it. We even futzed with the formatting of the printed document to make it look nice! (This was before desktop publishing, obviously; today what we spent weeks on would take all of an hour to do. )

Now that I'm a bit older, I tend to stay away from adding rules, unless (as jeff said) it bugs the hell outta me. For 3.5e, that's only a very few cases.

That said, I do love to tinker....and I admit, one of my house rules is just me tinkering 'cause it's fun, not 'cause it's necessary. (I tweaked the player races a bit.)

The advantage of "few house rules" is simplicity....and that there are fewer arguements about what's "fair and balanced".

 

[mafisto]

Big Changes vs. Little Changes

I'm not so sure that it's about big changes vs. little changes. Certainly, changing the fundamental mechanics of the system can be scary, but many of those fundamentals are modular or follow simple patterns. As an example:

I removed the magic system of D&D for my campaign, pretty much in whole. The PHB is utterly useless if you want to understand magic IMC. I use the older Grim 'n' Gritty variant hit point rules, which impacts attacks, hit points, critical hits, and the entire armor class system. Changes, changes, everywhere changes.

But it works - because it's consistent. I think where large (or small) changes become a problem is in cases where they're just slapped in, or serve no larger purpose. I run a heavily modified set of rules because I wanted to run a low-money, low-magic, grim world. Core rules didn't work for that, so I changed what I needed to to make it work.

I guess what I'm saying is, it's more about your overall goals and how you're achieving them than the actual scope of the changes.

 

[Ibram]

Almost one year ago I realized that my house rules were growing out of control. Looking through my notes I realized that I was rewritting the d20 system so I decided to do a masive scale back.

Now I have 4 "house rules" (one major and three minor). the major one changes the AC system to a level based defense value/armor as DR system. Minor changes are Finesse is a rule not a feat (anyone can make a finesse attack with a finesse weapon), the skills Spot and Listen were merged into a single skill called perception, Dodge provides an over all bonus to DV instead of a targeted one.

I turned some of the more reasonable combat manuver house rules into feats Like Inititive Swordsmanship: which allows you to add your wisdom to your DV is you are wearing light or no armor.

 

[IronWolf]

I like the house rules kept to a minimum as a player and as a DM. I think it makes it easier for a new player to join the game or for existing players to know what reference to turn to for why something does or does not work.

The biggest house rule I use is for HP advancement, where you roll to beat the average for hit points. This is more to help the players not get stuck with rolling a 1 for their hp's at each new level.

With that being said, if a person (whether it be me as the DM or the person DM'ing my game) must use a house rule then at least make it consistent. Nothing worse than thinking your player can do something and suddenly the house rule shifts a little bit and you can no longer do it.

 

[Carpe DM]

I offer two insights.

(1) It seems to me that there are two types of houserules. First, a DM changes an existing rule that he does not like for a rule that he does. Thus, if I dislike the absurdly easy rules for sundering an object off of a player, or if I think that not being able to overrun on a charge is stupid (both rules I would be tempted to change), I alter them.

But there is a second type of house rule: a rule that one simply does not use because it is too complicated. Here the objection is procedural, rather than substantive: the rule as written is simply too time-consuming and impractical to be used. A great example of this are the endless and idiotic rules on terrain types (wait, I'm in a forest, I move 1/2 speed, get +2 on my armorclass? Or is it 1/4 speed, get a +4 on my...aw, soddit).

If I were to advocate houseruling (I do not, see below), I would think that procedural houserules would improve the game, while substantive houserules would not -- whereas a procedural change makes a rule useable that wasn't before, a substantive change merely alters the outcome to one that the DM personally prefers.

(2) I'd also like to offer the following justification for no houserules. I believe houseruling rarely -- if ever -- improves the game. The game is playable as is. Therefore, nothing specific is required to make the game playable. Each rule change is an alteration of the expectations of how the game usually works out. Players rely on this. Their past experience teaches them smart moves for the present.

In short, humility is in order. I think I can improve the 3.5 rules. I hate the changes to Paladins. I think the sundering objects rules are just dumb. I think not being able to overrun on a charge is silly. There are a few others.

But can I really guess better than the accumulated experience of the players of this game, as encoded in the RAW? The RAW are a product of thousands of campaigns. I have 20 years gaming experience. The RAW represent hundreds of thousands of times that.

To vindicate player expectations, to prevent the DM from upsetting the game over personal preferences, and to give everyone a sense that they are not just writing a communal novel, but are playing a game, my inclination is to use no houserules at all.

best,

Carpe

 

[Desdichado]

I'm with Trainz; the only gauge of whether or not house rules are good is, is it fun? I have so many house rules that I essentially call my campaign a d20 fantasy game only tangentially related to D&D. But it's fun, so it's not too many house rules.

Besides, what's a house rule anymore? Hardly any of my "house rules" are from the house, so to speak, they're from somebody else who printed it, and I used it.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I don't have a lot of houserules, but I do houserule a lot of alternative rules from books like Advanced Player's Manual and Unearthed Arcana.

For me, if a hosuerule adds too much time to resolve something, it's jettisioned. This has included almost every set of critical hit rules as well as some others like various aspects of action points.