What are your vital houserules?

[CombatWombat51]

What's most important to your game?

I'm starting a new game with a new player, and I've realized that the learning curve is just too steep. 3e by itself, is hard enough to teach, but all my pages of houserules are just too much. So I've decided to cut down my house rules to make a 'basic version', of sorts. And of course, this makes me wonder what everyone else would keep, if they could only keep 3 to 5 houserules. What is so important to their game?

I'm still working on chopping down mine, though I'll be sure to share later. Anyone got any good ones?

 

[ciaran00]

My vital rules chop away/reduce 3.5e rules (or at least the in-game time required to resolve them) instead of adding any...

Get rid of tedious house rules... if you look at it analytically, you might realise you don't need many of them. It happened to me.

ciaran

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

I keep my game fairly close to D&D 3.5 baseline. The most important house rules I have are:

1. Races Available - The Half-Elf and Half-Orc are out, but four new races (Mannegishi,Ohdowa,Sokqueatl and Tlanuwa) are in.

2. Classes Available - The Druid and Monk are out, the Shaman and Noble are in.

3. Paladins - No multi-class restriction, may be any good alignment, and no Pokemount ability.

 

[Jack Daniel]

1. Hit Points are replaced by Wounds & Vitality, and the obligatory defense bonus and armor DR rules that come with them.

2. New races & classes are a good thing; half-dwarves, half-merfolk, half-ogres, and nobles, ninjas, and technologists are standard. The barbarian is called berserker and the druid is called witch.

3. The rest of my essential house rules are in my 3.X Compendium (the yellow link in my signature).

 

[Gez]

1° Print and read the setting manual, it contains all the pertinent rules.
2° Refer to the Player's Handbook or Dungeon Master's Guide only for rules that are not in the setting manual.

 

[Trainz]

The main one me and the other DM use is the following (that I grabbed from someone else on these boards, but that became vital to our games) :

We give each player 4 tokens at the start of the game. These tokens can be used for one of two things:

1) boost a die roll, any one, as follows:

Character level 1-5: 1d4
Character level 6-10: 1d6
Character level 11-15: 1d8
Character level 16-20: 1d10
Character level 21-25: 1d12
Character level 26+: 1d20

2) make a monster (anything behind the DM's screen) reroll. Very useful against critters that crit on you or critters that succeed at saving against one of your spell.

One would think that such a house rule would be too unbalancing, but 6 months of gaming with it (with two games a week) demonstrated that it is not so. The main effect is that the DM has an easier time preparing an adventure, not having to "pull his punches" because he knows that the players have a limited way to turn a TPK into a near death situation. Believe you me, our games are not easier on the PC's, they're just not so drastic anymore. A nice feeling.

 

[Li Shenron]

I'm starting a new game with a new player, and I've realized that the learning curve is just too steep. 3e by itself, is hard enough to teach, but all my pages of houserules are just too much. So I've decided to cut down my house rules to make a 'basic version', of sorts. And of course, this makes me wonder what everyone else would keep, if they could only keep 3 to 5 houserules. What is so important to their game?

Does the new player own the Player's Handbook? If he doesn't, why should he have more difficulties in learning the game with your house rules? Unless they are very complicated, he would never know that you changed the core rule, so for him one way or the other will be the same.

Adding or eliminating some of the player's choices (classes, races, feats...) doesn't make the game easier or more difficult. Less choices makes indeed the character generation faster, so you may just keep the rules as you want but give suggestions to the new player about making a classic character: for example, if he wants a spellcaster, don't overwhelm him with metamagic and item creation which he probably couldn't use at low levels, and instead suggests him defensive feats such as Dodge or Toughness. It doesn't matter if you think they are weak feats, at least they are easy to use. Suggests him to play a class which is more straightforward, such as Sorcerer instead of Wizard (less spells to know, no preparation to bother about, more spells/day in case he wastes some).

Anyway, you can just play per the book, there's nothing so bad that it won't work, and most of the house rules I have heard about tend to complicate slightly, and very rarely simplify.

 

[Gez]

1) boost a die roll, any one, as follows:

Even hit die roll?

 

[darkbard]

1. Hit Points are replaced by Wounds & Vitality, and the obligatory defense bonus and armor DR rules that come with them.

jack daniel, care to explain what defense bonus/DR rules you use? i've just decided to make use of a VP/WP system for my new game and the only change i've made thus far is to make criticals go straight to WP but reduce the critical multiplier by 2, instead increasing the threat range by any additional multiplier left over after the reduction [e.g. 20/x3 becomes 19-20/x1].

what else did you think needed change?

 

[CombatWombat51]

Does the new player own the Player's Handbook? If he doesn't, why should he have more difficulties in learning the game with your house rules? Unless they are very complicated, he would never know that you changed the core rule, so for him one way or the other will be the same.

Adding or eliminating some of the player's choices (classes, races, feats...) doesn't make the game easier or more difficult. Less choices makes indeed the character generation faster, so you may just keep the rules as you want but give suggestions to the new player about making a classic character: for example, if he wants a spellcaster, don't overwhelm him with metamagic and item creation which he probably couldn't use at low levels, and instead suggests him defensive feats such as Dodge or Toughness. It doesn't matter if you think they are weak feats, at least they are easy to use. Suggests him to play a class which is more straightforward, such as Sorcerer instead of Wizard (less spells to know, no preparation to bother about, more spells/day in case he wastes some).

She does have a PHB, or at least free access to mine, being my fiance an' all . The reason it'd be difficult is that my house rules modify core rules... so while she'd be reading over clerics, I'd have to tell her the appropriate modifications instead of just playing out of the book, for instance. Even if I handed her my PHB and house rules and said 'read and learn', it'd still be a pain. Not that it couldn't be done, but learning how to play an RPG for the first time can be difficult. Oh, and new players tend to think of house rules as cheating... something I can't get my head around. My house rules would also be more difficult to learn since it's simply more information.

As I do things, I rarely have new players read the PHB, cuz it's just too much crap. The first time I played DnD, my DM just asked me questions, and did the technical work for me. He didn't tell me any rules until it came up. Kept me in the game, and I eventually got the hang of the rules, and came to read the little black book myself. The problem I fear is that if my DM would have used bunches of house rules, then I would have been confused when I started reading the PHB. And it's a likewise situation with any new player.

Anyway, you can just play per the book, there's nothing so bad that it won't work, and most of the house rules I have heard about tend to complicate slightly, and very rarely simplify.

True, I could do that, but then I'd have to pay the dentist a pretty penny from gritting my teeth so much