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What does you House Rules document look like?
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<blockquote data-quote="Byrons_Ghost" data-source="post: 2079482" data-attributes="member: 7396"><p>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:</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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).</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>There's also a few rules that I'll probably be keeping:</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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).</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>Obviously, I had a lot of spellcasters in my games. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> 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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Byrons_Ghost, post: 2079482, member: 7396"] 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. [/QUOTE]
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