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<blockquote data-quote="irdeggman" data-source="post: 5458666" data-attributes="member: 16285"><p>Actually in my experience house-rules more often come from how the DM wants his world to be - that is they are "color" based rules not changes to rules that don't fit or work well.</p><p></p><p>For example:</p><p></p><p>The DM "decided" that elves would be allergic to cold iron and that any weapons made of such material would cause them extra damage. Cold iron was a way of manufacturing not a material type (basically the real world definition). I had to prompt him for what should the elf PC being played by another player would recieve as a racial benefit to compensate for this. This was 3.0 and then when 3.5 came out and more clearly defined material types it caused him even more issues with his vision of the world. He ended up granting a sort of animal companion feature to the PC. It really sucked because the PC in question was an archer and since "steel" wasn't commonly available he had great difficulty making arrow heads to use.</p><p></p><p>Same DM, same game - humans had subraces each with their own traits. One PC (1st level) recieved the benefit to sleep in her armor with no penalty (3.0 before the endurance feat basically granted this ability for the armor in question), also she had a fleet of highly trained war horses that were much more effective in combat than the PCs were. One other subrace received basically a souped up katana to reflect his culture, the other PCs got nothing whatsoever since their cultures were never fully developed in the DM's mind first (even though that was the basic land the group was starting in). The sleep in armor issue became huge since the DM was fond of having the party attacked at night and surprised no matter how many guards we had awake (strict rulings on the Spot/Listen checks enforced at that time),</p><p></p><p>Same DM - wands required "masterwork" wand to be enchanted. So any PC who wanted to craft a wand had to either go buy a masterwork quality wand to enchant or craft his own using some sort of craft skill depending on what it was to be made of (again a vague ruling on what this process was) - and the material cost of the masterwork wand was to part of the overall cost of crafting it. My questions on this which were never answered were - what special benefits are granted to the "wand" for being masterwork since all masterwork items are granted some bonuse fo their non-masterwork components, how is the cost affected of crafting a wand (clearly spelled out in the DMG) affected if you craft your own wand material versus buying one?</p><p></p><p></p><p>The list goes on and on for this DM inserting house rules that were not truely thought out and him not understanding the 3.0/3.5 rules to know how he was effecting them. He was a very, very experienced player and DM in the 2nd ed rules and unfortunatly he based his house rules on that rule set instead of first understanding how the 3.X rules actually worked.</p><p></p><p>I have had several other DMs who did the same thing with house rules - inserted house rules with game mechanic properties to fill in "color" issues of the game and not looking at "balance" {if you take something away from a race or class then you need to give some equal to them to make up for it} or the infamous "domino effect" where the implications of the house rule affect another game mechanic which impacts a different one, , ,,</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="irdeggman, post: 5458666, member: 16285"] Actually in my experience house-rules more often come from how the DM wants his world to be - that is they are "color" based rules not changes to rules that don't fit or work well. For example: The DM "decided" that elves would be allergic to cold iron and that any weapons made of such material would cause them extra damage. Cold iron was a way of manufacturing not a material type (basically the real world definition). I had to prompt him for what should the elf PC being played by another player would recieve as a racial benefit to compensate for this. This was 3.0 and then when 3.5 came out and more clearly defined material types it caused him even more issues with his vision of the world. He ended up granting a sort of animal companion feature to the PC. It really sucked because the PC in question was an archer and since "steel" wasn't commonly available he had great difficulty making arrow heads to use. Same DM, same game - humans had subraces each with their own traits. One PC (1st level) recieved the benefit to sleep in her armor with no penalty (3.0 before the endurance feat basically granted this ability for the armor in question), also she had a fleet of highly trained war horses that were much more effective in combat than the PCs were. One other subrace received basically a souped up katana to reflect his culture, the other PCs got nothing whatsoever since their cultures were never fully developed in the DM's mind first (even though that was the basic land the group was starting in). The sleep in armor issue became huge since the DM was fond of having the party attacked at night and surprised no matter how many guards we had awake (strict rulings on the Spot/Listen checks enforced at that time), Same DM - wands required "masterwork" wand to be enchanted. So any PC who wanted to craft a wand had to either go buy a masterwork quality wand to enchant or craft his own using some sort of craft skill depending on what it was to be made of (again a vague ruling on what this process was) - and the material cost of the masterwork wand was to part of the overall cost of crafting it. My questions on this which were never answered were - what special benefits are granted to the "wand" for being masterwork since all masterwork items are granted some bonuse fo their non-masterwork components, how is the cost affected of crafting a wand (clearly spelled out in the DMG) affected if you craft your own wand material versus buying one? The list goes on and on for this DM inserting house rules that were not truely thought out and him not understanding the 3.0/3.5 rules to know how he was effecting them. He was a very, very experienced player and DM in the 2nd ed rules and unfortunatly he based his house rules on that rule set instead of first understanding how the 3.X rules actually worked. I have had several other DMs who did the same thing with house rules - inserted house rules with game mechanic properties to fill in "color" issues of the game and not looking at "balance" {if you take something away from a race or class then you need to give some equal to them to make up for it} or the infamous "domino effect" where the implications of the house rule affect another game mechanic which impacts a different one, , ,, [/QUOTE]
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