TS' Tome of Collected House Rules up for Download!

[Tequila Sunrise]

The Tequila Sunrise Tome of Collected House Rules and Variants

Inside you'll find dozens of simple and effective variants to make your game more streamlined and more fun, organized by Player's Handbook chapters (and a DMG chapter).

TS

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Good stuff. I really don't care the page backgrounds, but otherwise it is well put together. I'm considering borrowing your Damage Reduction rules.

 

[Anguish]

First up, let me say great effort. That being said... I've got a comment.

Set Hit Points
If we don’t roll to gain other level dependant benefits such as skill points and feats, why should we roll for hit points? Using this variant, characters gain half their hit die plus one hit points per level instead of rolling their hit die.

Errrr. Wait. That gives a character 210 free hit points over a 20-level career, regardless of class. Meanwhile you're taking away a half hit point on average from the die roll. Average over time for a D12 is 6.5 Average for D4 is 2.5 Your system shaves the halves. Which amounts to 10 hit points on average over the career. Net result: +200 hit points.

Even if you're eliminating hit points gained/lost from having a Con bonus/penalty, that's still a pretty steep power-creep. I would think a melee type who puts reasonable effort into his Con score would probably pull maybe as much as a +7 bonus by 20th. So +140 hitpoints for him from Con.

That means a fighter type stands to gain 60 hit points for free with your house-rule. A wizard who's got a decent chance of having no meaningful Con bonus (let's give him +2 just to be generous) would accrue 40 hit points from Con, netting such a character 160 hit points for free.

I'd think that's pretty serious. If you're not taking away hit points from Con, it's even more serious.

 

[Anguish]

No Trapfinding: Using this variant, Trapfinding is recognized as a non-ability. Its only purpose is to force a player in a group to take a level of rogue even if nobody wants to. Therefore, this ability does not exist and any character with ranks in Disable Device and Search can attempt to find and disable traps of any DC.

Praise Pelor. Or Mystra. Or the Sovereign Host.

 

[jeffh]

First up, let me say great effort. That being said... I've got a comment.

Set Hit Points
If we don’t roll to gain other level dependant benefits such as skill points and feats, why should we roll for hit points? Using this variant, characters gain half their hit die plus one hit points per level instead of rolling their hit die.

Errrr. Wait. That gives a character 210 free hit points over a 20-level career, regardless of class. Meanwhile you're taking away a half hit point on average from the die roll. Average over time for a D12 is 6.5 Average for D4 is 2.5 Your system shaves the halves. Which amounts to 10 hit points on average over the career. Net result: +200 hit points.

Even if you're eliminating hit points gained/lost from having a Con bonus/penalty, that's still a pretty steep power-creep. I would think a melee type who puts reasonable effort into his Con score would probably pull maybe as much as a +7 bonus by 20th. So +140 hitpoints for him from Con.

That means a fighter type stands to gain 60 hit points for free with your house-rule. A wizard who's got a decent chance of having no meaningful Con bonus (let's give him +2 just to be generous) would accrue 40 hit points from Con, netting such a character 160 hit points for free.

I'd think that's pretty serious. If you're not taking away hit points from Con, it's even more serious.

What are you talking about?

You seem to think he's got people adding their level to their hit points at each level-up, or something like that. At least, that's the only way I can make sense of your math. But the passage you quoted doesn't say anything even vaguely resembling that. And the one thing you did say that was sort of like what the rule actually said (the bit about rounding down), you still managed to get wrong.

EDIT: Actually, now I see where you made the mistake, and the misreading on your part is more subtle than it seemed at first. You read "half their hit die plus one hit points per level" as "(half their hit die) plus (one hit point per level)", missing the "s" which makes it clear - though I would have thought it would be obvious even without it - that the correct reading is "(half their hit die plus one) hit points per level"

 

[Afrodyte]

I really like what you've done here. Quick question: Can you incorporate all these variant rules at the same time if you wanted to?

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

First I'd like to say thanks to everyone who's downloaded the pdf and commented here.

Set Hit Points
...
I'd think that's pretty serious. If you're not taking away hit points from Con, it's even more serious.

I may have made this variant unclear. For example, a fighter would gain 6 hp per level plus the usual Con bonus. So over 20 levels its 10 extra hp for everyone, regardless of level and/or Con score.

I really like what you've done here. Quick question: Can you incorporate all these variant rules at the same time if you wanted to?

Yes, I specifically made sure that none of these rules would conflict with each other, and I plan on using a good many of them in an upcoming Planescape game I'll be DMing. As an aside, I also tried my best to ensure that no variant is dependant on another although with a couple I did have to suggest that two be combined.

 

[Nellisir]

The Tequila Sunrise Tome of Collected House Rules and Variants

Inside you'll find dozens of simple and effective variants to make your game more streamlined and more fun, organized by Player's Handbook chapters (and a DMG chapter).

TS

I'll look at it if you put up a copy without the colored background. I haven't got time to read a 33 page document at the computer, and I can't print it with that background.

 

[Griffith Dragonlake]

The Tequila Sunrise Tome of Collected House Rules and Variants

Inside you'll find dozens of simple and effective variants to make your game more streamlined and more fun, organized by Player's Handbook chapters (and a DMG chapter).

TS

Some suggestions:

• Change the background color to white.

• Change your text typeface to one designed for text, e.g. Galliard, Garamond, Goudy Old Style, Book Antiqua, etc.

• Papyrus is fine for a header typeface, after all it was used to great effect in Dark Sun. However, it will remind a lot of your readers of Dark Sun. Do you want your readers to think 'Dark Sun' while reading these variants?

• Organize your rules so that they better align to the WotC format. For example, the first paragraph is flavor text. Followed by mechanics. Follwed by designer notes/behind the curtain. The last part is very important as it tells your audience the rationale behind the variant. For example, why is the leadership feat not allowed? Another benefit of following this format is that your reader can skim the variants and quickly asess what is interesting. For example, I had to read the entire description of the variant Elf before getting to the mechanical change.

• Also consider writing your text in the way that WotC writes it. For example with static hit points, you could write 'instead of rolling a die for hit points at each level, each class gets 1/2 their hit die rounded up.'

Just my thoughts.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

There is now a black and white version available for download. There are many things I may add and edit in the future but right now, life calls.

TS