What does you House Rules document look like?

[ThirdWizard]

Mine's pretty short, here's the house rules.

House Rule #01: Sorcerers can Quicken spells.
House Rule #02: Quicken Spell is +3 spell levels instead of +4.
House Rule #03: Rapid Reload is applied to all crossbows.
House Rule #04: Command Undead’s duration is 1 hour/level.
House Rule #05: Scorching Ray is caps at two rays.
House Rule #06: Hit points are rolled with a d(X-2) and +2 is added for levels 2-4.
House Rule #07: Check distance at the beginning of a caster's turn to termine spell effects that are limited by range. (ie all creatures within 30' of the caster)
House Rule #08: Vorpal is nonexistent.
House Rule #09: Sudden changes in alignment warrant a 20% xp penalty for an amount of experience equal to the amount needed to go from your current level to your next level.
House Rule #10: All classes can freely multiclass with no restriction (ie Paladins).

#9 is the saddest thing ever, but you'd understand if you had gamed with these people. There's also a 2 1/2 page explaination of alignments, and I explicitly say everything non-Core is optional at my discression.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

Most of the houserules I had, running games under early 3e rules, I probably wouldn't use now. Either the mechanics have changed, or it's just not as big a deal as I originally thought it was. Examples:

1. Early on, I restricted prestige class use to one per character, and kept people from gaining more levels in a prestige class than in their highest base class. This rule came from an early assumption that prestige classes would be rare in the game, as opposed to being practically necessary as they are now.

2. Even under 3e, we had a rule (agreed to by the players) that haste didn't allow multiple spellcasting per round. Since that was changed under 3.5, that rule is no longer needed.

3. Originally, I didn't like the idea of rogues making multiple sneak attacks per round, and limited it to one per round (plus one impromptu sneak attack per round, a concession to the arcane trickster player). Knowing more about the mechanics now, and running the numbers in my head, I'd probably drop this rule in future games, as I don't think the extra attacks make that much of a difference. (Note: one reason behind this rule was that I tend to run NPC villains a lot more than I use big bad monsters, and villains tended to be easier to sneak attack, and felt the damage more).

4. I tried a rule I'd seen in another game in which players declare their actions in reverse initiative order, thus allowing the faster people to respond to the actions that the slower ones were doing. I found that it actually took away from some of the faster people's options ("If X is doing Y, then I'll do Z instead"), and was also pretty confusing during combat. So it's gone.

There's also a few rules that I'll probably be keeping:

1. Specialist wizards learned bonus spells in their specialty each level, a holdover from 2e house rules (that might've even been official, I can't really remember). So, basically, an illusionist gaining a new level would add the usual 2 spells to the book, plus one free illusion.

2. Because of an illusionist PC, illusion rules were changed somewhat to make them harder to see through. Essentially things worked closer to 2e illusions, where viewers needed both a reason and an action in order to disbelieve. Also, each spell only gives one saving throw, to give a slight boost to things like shadow spells, which gave an immediate disbelief and then a save vs. damage. Depending on how much future players use illusions, I may or may not keep these rules. Also, I'd probably have rules in place to prevent Spellcraft checks from spotting illusions being cast (though this never came up in my last campaign).

3. I've never been fond of spellcasters casting in melee, or the whole five foot step back maneuver. I kept that, as well as defensive casting etc, but had a rule that damage dealt prior to the spellcaster's turn call for Concentration rolls, same as Attacks of Opp. during the casting. Since AoO were almost never landed anyhow, this brought a bit more risk back to spellcasters in close melee combat. Again, this rule may or may not be kept in future games.

4. I have tables worked out for recharging charged magic items, and upgrading permanent magic items with more abilities. Basically the person with the feat in question just pays the difference between the two items, or pays what the charges would have cost during the initial creation.

Obviously, I had a lot of spellcasters in my games. Really, I'm pretty happy with the 3.5 RAW, so future house rules would probably evolve more around what sort of game I want to run. If I'm doing the Eberron pulp hero game, for example, there will be rules for more use of action points, dramatic editing, etc.

 

[Sammael]

The last time I posted a link to my house rules document here, one of the mods removed the link because it contained copyrighted stuff. I'd call that a bit overly paranoid, but, whatever.

 

[Mark]

Mine includes putting a couple of bucks on Free Parking...

 

[dreaded_beast]

I loved Olgar Shiverstone's House Document so much, I decided to snag it for my own and make my own modifications.

I hope you don't mind Olgar, and if you do, please let me know.

 

[Zappo]

Nonexistant. I play 3.5 as it is. ^_^

 

[Liquidsabre]

Here's the Index for the Houserules in effect for the game I currently run:

Game-Play: Character Background Bonus XP, Hero Points, In-Character Game Summaries Bonus XP, Stat Generation Method.

Races: Alt. Half-Elf, Alt. Half-Orc.

Racial Classes: Aasimar Paragon, Lycanthrope Paragon.

Classes: Alt. Favored Soul, Alt. Paladin, Alt. Sorcerer, Alt. Swashbuckler, Mystic (spont. druid), Noble, Priest.

Template Classes: Half-Celestial, Shade

Class Features: Cleric (Bonus Divine Feats), Druid (Wildshape 10 min/level), Paladin (Censure Outsider), Ranger (Favored Terrain), Rogue (Bonus Feats), Weapon Proficiency Groups, Wizard (Lore).

Skills: Knowledge (Local), Profession (Gladiator), Profession (Sailor).

Feats: Agile Riposte, Dodge, Natural Spell, Parry, Spell Focus, Spell Mastery, Track.

Magic: Scrolls, Spontaneous Metamagic, Underwater Spell Effects.

Spells: Cone of Cold, Entangle, Gaseous Form, Vigor Spells, Web.

 

[schnee]

My 'House Rules' document looks like a single page Word doc. We play a fairly 'Beer and Pretzels' game - i.e. mostly miniatures combat, with enough other stuff thrown in to make it interesting - and the rules as written work well enough for the amount of time we spend gaming.

Most of my rules spelled out character gen stuff - which books I allowed, how to spend starting money (we started at 13th level), point buy totals, etc. I only have a few 'house' rules, and only one really affects game play... I increased the negative HP total of higher level characters a bit.

 

[Impeesa]

I just starting DMing again this weekend for the first time in a while. I have, however, been playing and reading the boards all the while, so I've put a decent amount of thought into this. So far, the house rules (including campaign-specific stuff) look like so:


-Ride is a class skill for everybody.



And that's only because I intend for pretty much everyone to end up riding dragons. I call the campaign as a whole "Extraplanar Fortress Macross."

--Impeesa--

 

[Ravellion]

I go through each of the PHB chapters in a one page word doc, and explain what's different. Then I basically have a class and a race appendix. Most of the chapters are unchanged. The classes chapter is deleted entirely, because I use UA basic classes.

My house rule document has the UA basic classes in it, so all my players have a copy of them. Because those classes can choose the class and cross class skills anyway, I decided to just get rid of the class/cross class distinction entirely, which I'll probably keep that way in any future d20 games regardless of which classes are available. Hence I have the expert and warrior classes statted out in 6 lines (1 good save, 2 poor saves, d10 hit die, bonus feats at these levels, 2 skill points per level, weapon and armour proficiencies.)

I also ripped the Goliath race off from the WotC website and pasted it in my HR document (I probably would have used a home brew "big strong" type otherwise).

Rav