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

[Sebastian Francis]

D&D as it stands is a glorified power-up videogame that is pandering to sixteen year olds,

Amen, brother! I agree!

 

[The_Gneech]

Well, I avoid house rules because the reason I play D&D is the pregenerated source material. If I'm gonna be converting stuff to usable "house format" anyway, I would rather just stick with Fantasy Hero, which is what I used to run.

-The Gneech

 

[Desdichado]

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.

Baaa!

Please, that's ridiculous. Let me rephrase that to make sure I understood you correctly. Please, chime in and tell me if I've interpreted wrongly. "I hate the way some of the rules work, but who am I to change them? After all, if millions of other players are using them as written (by the way, that's an unprovable assumption, and I suspect you'd find that almost every group uses some houserules) then I must just want to have 'wrong fun' and therefore, I must stop and play as written, even though I hate some aspects of the rules."

I'd argue that your assumption that the rules straight out of the book most certainly are not the product of thousands of campaigns; they're the product of a handful of designers at WotC, and that's that. And besides that, the real experts on what's fun for you and your group are you and your group, and nobody else. This whole "I'm so inferior" attitude is, frankly, quite baffling.

 

[Ace]

My rule is to not have more house rules than you can remember off the top of your head. If I have to be looking at a list of them, I have too many.

I seperate house rules -- that is changes to the fundamental way some things are expected to work -- i.e class mods -- rules mods and add on etc from "house add ons" that is new spells - prc's and feats

I limit myself to one page of house rules --- 2 if printed on my computer but I have lots of house add ons

 

[reanjr]

A good rule of thumb is when it takes longer to teach new players the house rules than it does to have them create a character.

I tend to let the players vote on major house rules (weapon group proficiencies, initiative system changes, etc.) that I feel just make the game better. That cuts down on some of them. I don't really let them vote on something that is for campaign flavor (perhaps a new spell system) but if they are against it, then I'll usually scrap it.

DMs: Do you find it hard to avoid adding new house rules to your game?

Very

Players: How bothered are you by house rules? Is there a number that would cause you to avoid a campaign?

Quasqueton

If I agree with the rules overall, then there is no upper limit. If there is a rule that is seriously hurting the fun of the game, then I quit (or at least change characters to something that is not so affected by the rule).

 

[reanjr]

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.

Real life and common sense should teach the player smart moves for the present. When this method doesn't work, there is something wrong with the rules.

 

[reanjr]

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.

Why not just use the RAW and let the player's choose average? That keeps 'em from getting 1's as well.

 

[Mallus]

The way I see it, the designers at WotC and me, as an individual DM and inveterate world-builder/rules tinkerer, have two radically different goals: they were out to create an inclusive, generic ruleset usable by as many people as possible. I'm just out to entertain myself... wait, and possibly my players...

If I alter/restrict/rewrite/chop up/paint racing stripes onto the rules-as-written, that's my business... I'm just out for some fun.

 

[Storyteller01]

I guess it depends on what's needed.

I run a campaign whose house rules fill a small handbook (most are due to the background stories).

My group also runs a basic hack & slash campaign (for those times that we want to just play something different). With this one, we run four house rules, and all but one are variations in the DMG.

 

[Ry]

My method is a combination of some of those above: For house rules that every player needs to know (for example, that casters can combine 3 lower-level slots to a higher-level one, or the details of how the level cap works), it has to keep to 2 pages. Why? Because 2 pages is around the limit of what I can reasonably expect my players to read, when it's not necessarily relevant to their characters.