All this talk about the 3.5 update got me thinking: what house rules do you use? Are there any spells or magic items you disallow? Can PCs buy magic items? What bits of 3E did you change or drop in your campaigns? Why?
My list is relatively short, since as a designer I need to follow the published rules as close as possible. Otherwise, I might make mistakes where I fall back to my house rules when thinking of something rather than using the standard ones.
Anyway, here goes:
* Non-evil rangers can take their own race as favored enemy. I didn't like that restriction: what about bounty hunter or lawman style rangers that would naturally handle enemies of their own race? If a human ranger patrolled a forest where human bandits were a continual problem, it makes sense he could take human as a favored enemy.
* AoAs are almost all judgement calls. Aside from obvious ones (charging a creature with 10 ft. reach) most of the time I eyeball AoAs. If a player is going to do something to draw one, I point it out and either come up with an alternative way he can complete the action without getting attacked or tell him he's hosed. Sometimes I pass on this if the players are more comfortable going by the rules.
* Diagonal movement is free. While technically moving diagonally on a map grid should cost more movement, I never bothered. I've never seen where it became a big deal, and since the monsters got the advantage too it didn't unbalance anything.
* Monk and paladin restrictions on multiclassing are gone. I never really saw the problem. The alignment restrictions work well enough.
* Bards get 6 skill ranks per level. It just made sense to me, since they don't really have many other cool features aside from their music.
What house rules do you use?
My list is relatively short, since as a designer I need to follow the published rules as close as possible. Otherwise, I might make mistakes where I fall back to my house rules when thinking of something rather than using the standard ones.
Anyway, here goes:
* Non-evil rangers can take their own race as favored enemy. I didn't like that restriction: what about bounty hunter or lawman style rangers that would naturally handle enemies of their own race? If a human ranger patrolled a forest where human bandits were a continual problem, it makes sense he could take human as a favored enemy.
* AoAs are almost all judgement calls. Aside from obvious ones (charging a creature with 10 ft. reach) most of the time I eyeball AoAs. If a player is going to do something to draw one, I point it out and either come up with an alternative way he can complete the action without getting attacked or tell him he's hosed. Sometimes I pass on this if the players are more comfortable going by the rules.
* Diagonal movement is free. While technically moving diagonally on a map grid should cost more movement, I never bothered. I've never seen where it became a big deal, and since the monsters got the advantage too it didn't unbalance anything.
* Monk and paladin restrictions on multiclassing are gone. I never really saw the problem. The alignment restrictions work well enough.
* Bards get 6 skill ranks per level. It just made sense to me, since they don't really have many other cool features aside from their music.
What house rules do you use?
