What house rules do you use in your games?

[Thanee]

- Psionics are banned!
- scribing costs for wizardly spells is divided by 10
- Spell Focus gives +2, Greater Spell Focus has been removed (tho, I would consider it as a high level feat with something like caster level 12th or 15th as requirement)
- half-elves gain bonus skill points like humans
- half-orcs gain a +4 racial bonus to Intimidate
- range increments are all of the same length (the first one is not 5 ft. shorter)
- some 1 min./lvl spells have a 10 min./lvl duration (Invisibility, Fly, Polymorph, Bull's Strength, etc)
- Polymorph is a personal spell
- Righteous Might gives full size changes (as in the MM) plus the DR from the errata
- Rogues can find traps automatically when passing them at reasonable speed, works like the elves' finding of secret doors (with penalties similar to the Hide skill and movement)
- Sorcerers get 4+Int skill points and some more class skills (Diplomacy, Intimidate, Knowledge (the planes) and Use Magic Device), they also gain Eschew Materials for free at 1st level
- the school of illusion is not automatically discerned when using Detect Magic or Spellcraft on an illusion spell; instead the observer makes a Will save as for interacting with the illusion and if it fails gets a false reading (determined by the creator of the illusion)
- PCs always gain at least HD/2 hit points each level; if they roll less, treat the roll as that number instead
- prone 5-ft. step: as a move action a prone character can make a 5-ft. step (same limit to one per round applies), which does not provoke attacks of opportunity
- with Brew Potion you can make any number of identical potions and with Scribe Scroll up to six scrolls per day, as long as the total cost is not above 1,000 gp

That's what I can think of right now.

Bye
Thanee

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

Hmmm....

Tweaked DanMcS' weapon proficiency system (I believe it was referred to earlier as woodelf's; woodelf compiled and tweaked but did not make it).

Fractional BAB/saves.

UA variant XP rule.

No class skills.

Re-roll 1s on healing effects and hit dice.

Elements of Magic [Revised] and Lyceian Arcana for the magic system; MP limit=ECL.

Barbarian changed to a 15-level "Berserker" prestige class.

Half-elves get human bonus skill points.

A dodge bonus to AC based on class and level.

The Book of Hallowed Might alignment system.

 

[Pinotage]

What was this in particular?

Ok, maybe a 3rd level commoner with Improved Unarmed Strike and Deflect arrows. Deflect Arrows is an automatic success on the first arrow. Sure, you'll die on the second, third, fourth, etc (unless you're a cat) but I didn't like the idea that it was even possible. It should be something along the lines of an opposed attack roll.

Pinotage

 

[Gez]

I've a lot of house-rules. Most classes have been tweaked. All races have been tweaked. New races and new classes. Several feats have been modified, even more created.

But the fastest to describe house rules are:

Fractionnal progression for BAB, saves, and magic.

Magic progression is full (for 9-casters like clerics, druids, psions, sorcerers, warmages, wizards, wu jens...), 2/3 (for 5-6-7 casters like bards, psychic warriors, adepts, or those classes taken from AU, mageblade, runethane, and witch) or 1/2 for half-casters (paladins, rangers, sohei) and non-casters.

Unified spell lists. There are only four spell lists, arcane (bard+wizard+wu jen), divine (cleric+paladin+sohei), telluric (druid+ranger) and psionic (psion+psychic warrior). Individual classes are further restricted by schools and descriptor (e.g., the bard gets only the schools of conjuration, illusion, enchantment, and transmutation, plus spells with the sonic or light descriptor).

Single spellcasting table. The wizard's spell per day table is used for spellcasting for all classes, and depends directly on the magic rating. So a level 15 bard, with his magic rating of 2/3, gets a caster level of 10, and thus cast spells as a level 10 wizard.

Caster levels from all classes stack. If you have several spellcasting classes, you use the same spell slots for all your spells. Bonus spell slots are determined according to your highest spellcasting ability modifier.

Some classes (notably sorcerer and warmage) gets bonus spell slots as part of their class features, not of their overall caster level.

Spell access is part of the class features, and can be bought by feats.

So, for example, a wizard/cleric 8/8 will have a caster level of 16. He'll get spell slots of level from 0 to 8. He'll have access to arcane and divine spells of level 0 to 4. So, he can use his slots of level 5-8 for metamagicked versions of lower-level spells, or just for heightened versions (heighten is a standard "maneuver", not a feat). If he wants to access arcane spells of level 8, he'll have to spend four feats to get access to arcane spell levels 5, 6, 7, and finally 8. Same thing for divine spells -- 4 other feats.

So, IMC, a "mystic theurge" is simply a build for a cleric/wizard 10/10 with 8 spell access feats (two of which can be taken as bonus feats for the wizard, at level 5 and 10). Or a wizard 15/cleric 5 (gets one more bonus feat that way). As this build gives naturally access to spell levels arcane 8 and divine 3, the "mystic theurge" only needs to invest 7 feats (one arcane spell access, 6 divine spell accesses). With, say, an Int of 22 and a Wis of 19, he'll get 6 spell slots for both level 0 and 1, 5 spell slots for each level from 2 to 6, and 4 spell slots for each levels from 7 to 9.

 

[GlassJaw]

I was thinking of starting up a new campaign and wondered if there were any house rule suggestions? What House Rules did you add to your campaigns and why? What did you notice in the rules that needed tweaking or you don't like?

The first thing I would ask is how much experience do you have with 3.X? Have you played/DM'ed in multiple campaigns at varying levels or are you relatively new to the game?

Don't go into campaign thinking that you need house rules. In my experience, unless you are running a very unique type of campaign, the less house rules the better. I ran a standard FR campaign a while back and spent a TON of to trying to house rule everything to death. I scoured message boards looking for stuff to change just for the sake of change. In the end it just wasn't worth it. The rules didn't add or take away from people having fun and the time spent just wasn't worth the effort.

Now that's not to say you shouldn't have any house rules. For example, I still have a few:

- Dodge gives a flat +1 to AC.
- I usually reduce the cost of learning spells but I don't have a hard and fast rule for it. I usually just wing it in game time. The rules as written just frustrate wizards IMO.
- Roll twice for hp's and take the highest.

Concentrate on your campaign and the adventures rather than the house rules. The more you play, you'll figure out what you like and don't like. But it's just so easy to spend every waking minute trying to rewrite everything. Just play!!

 

[jodyjohnson]

Including just the ones we use in every campaign.

1. Half the die minimum on Hit Points rolled
2. Cross Class skills at 1:1
3. Meta-magic includes one spontaneous use (limited Sudden but capped by max level as normal)
4. Platinum pieces are equal to 100 gold pieces.
5. House Rule our problem spells:
5a. Transformation spells (Alter Self, Polymorph, Poly Any, Shapechange, Baleful Poly, Animal Shapes, Animal Growth, Wildshape)
5b. Mordenkainen's Disjunction
5c. Gate
5d. Spikes, Brambles, Quillblast
6. Clarify spells with questionable interpretations (Break Enchantment, Prot. from Evil, Command, Fire Seeds, etc.)
7. Establish campaign definitions of alignment from the DMs standpoint.

We really get into item creation so we always add:
A. Item creation (other than scrolls and potions) requires the square root of the market price divided by 20 (sqr(price)/20) days (rounded up). Which means almost no items can be made in a single day and most items take significantly less time (hugely less for epic items).

 

[Terath Ninir]

1) A few spell changes, such as buff spells lasting 10 min/level, no cap on harm/heal but still 10 hp/level etc.

For simplicity, I just ruled that all spells with a duration of 1 min/level now have a duration of 10 min/level. It gives a boost to a few spells that have always been 1 min/level, but not really all that many. Most of them are clerical, too.

 

[azmodean]

too many house rules

It depends heavily on the flavor of your campaign. I'm running a campaign that starts at lvl 10 and I am intending to take it to epic, and over half the party has templates of some sort.
I am only counting HD for the "epic cutoff" where you can no longer take normal class levels. Because of this, the lich can get her 9th levell cleric spells, the death knights can get a BAB of 20, the weretiger/monk can get a decent bab, and the ghost can get his lvl 9 sorceror spells. I'm also being very generous with practised spellcaster.

I'm letting the cleric take the lich prestiege class from the wotc web page, but I'm reducing the xp cost of those levels to offset the cost of creating the philactary.

Non-spellcasters can contribute xp toward making magical items(and they pay less for the item too), it keeps the item creator from dropping behind in xp as badly.

HP is either average or rolled, at the player's discretion. First HD is maxed.

Attributes are 32 pt. buy, I would prefer standard point buy or 4d6 drop, but all of the players are used to 32 pt buy because of our old DM, so they would feel nerfed if I dropped it

More general stuff: I allow all feats/spells/etc from the core books, all other rules are subject to DM aproval and tweaking. (for instance, fleshripper from BOVD does WAY too much damage, I capped it at 5d8 damage)

I like what people have been saying about skills, I'd eliminate the extra cost for cross-class skills if I were starting a campaign.

Spellcasters get heighten spell for free, it just doesn't seem to be worth spending a feat on.

I have a character who wants to make golems, I am ruling that golems are misc magical items, mostly because I want the party to have golems, and I think a golem-specific feat is overboard. Also that character has craft(golem) which replaces the impossible variety of skills required to assemble all the different golems.

I'm using the sacrifice, pain, and souls optional rules from BOVD, as well as drugs, curses, vile damage, optional spell components (demon heart!) (basically the BOVD is a core rulebook for this campaign), but when using souls to create magic items, they count as 10xp per HD instead of 10xp per soul. I am also increasing how much xp sacrifices can contribute toward magic items, and lowering the cost of creating a device to extract liquid pain.

I'm probably going to be allowing a lot more optional rules from the libris mortis, since I just got it.

Speaking of getting rulebooks, I let players reconfigure their characters if they find something in a new rulebook that lets them fufill their character concept better.

New players get characters at party minimum level, or one less, depending on how close the lowest level party member is to levelling.

I'd like to go to a wound based system instead of HP, but I don't think it meshes well with a bunch of undead PCs, and I don't think the players would like it.

Also there are many, many alternate rules that I would allow if a player were interested, such as variable spell save DC (1d20+spell level+attribute+bonuses instead of 10+spell level+attribute+bonuses)

 

[Storyteller01]

I use a modified SW rule for the monk's missle dodging ability. You can make specific checks per attack (DC: the attacker's roll), buty this uses an AoO. You can use a blanket roll against all missle attacks (DC:20) but you do nothing this round and can only take a partial action in the next.

Characters may use the Iaijutsu skill (OA) as the Sniper Focus skill. Follows the same basic rules (must be a surprise action, you lose your Dex bonus, etc). Fairly basic progression: 10-14: +1d6, 15-19: +2d6, etc. It maxes out at 9d6. This does not stack with Sneak attack, but can be used at any range. Rangers gain this skill as a class skill (I use a modified 3.0 ranger, but it should work for the 3.5 ranged weapon ranger).

AC is rolled, instead of 'taking 10'.

Monks can use their special abilities with any weapon they are proficint with.


All of my other changes are campaign specific.

 

[Staffan]

The house rules I use in my Eberron game are:
* Artificers can use their craft reserve to pay for XP cost of infusions.
* Use the metamind class from Hyperconscious, not from the XPH.
* Paladins and monks can multiclass without problems.
* A slightly modified Unfettered from AU is allowed as a class.
* Power attack has half benefit on light/offhand weapons and half-again benefit on two-handed weapons, instead of none and double. This matches the Strength bonus benefit (except for light weapons).
* The Dodge feat is replaced with Defensive Stance from Arcana Unearthed (basically, +1 dodge bonus to AC against all melee attacks).
* Spell Focus and Psionic Endowment give +2 DC. There are no Greater versions of them.
* You can't Monkey Grip a gauntlet or other weapon intended to be worn rather than wielded.
* You can follow tracks without the Track feat, you just get a -5 (technically, I increase all tracking DCs by 5 and have the feat give +5, but same difference).
* Energy Stun and Energy missile both have a DC increase of +1 per 2 PP spent on damage. Energy Missile hits one target by default, and can be augmented to hit more targets, 1 target per 2 PP (max 5).
* Dispel Psionics augments the cap to the dispel bonus with +2 per PP, not the dispel bonus itself. So if you're below 11th level, augmenting it is kinda pointless.
* If you're not satisfied with your hp roll, you can reroll it with a die one size lower (d12-d10-d8-d6-d4-d3-d2).
* You die at negative Con hp. You are disabled ("partial" action only, take damage if you do anything) from 0 down to negative Con bonus hp. So someone with Con 16 can perform limited actions at 0, -1, -2 and -3 hp, is unconscious from -4 down to -15, and dies at -16.

I think those are all the rules. I'm also considering either removing the free attack from Improved Trip or the AoO for standing up - probably the former.