What is your most trivial house rule?


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KenM said:
In the last long term game I played in, the DM would not let anyone take the leadership feat. He had that kind of stuff happen in game.

I don't really have a problem with the Leadership feat - I just don't like playing halfling or gnomes. I think that they are too stereotyped as comedy relief in my group, and I don't do comedy relief. :lol:

I do have a DM that has outlawed the Leadership feat just because he doesn't want to deal with it - he says he has enough stuff to deal with without running our NPCs as well as his. ;) I totally understand.
 

ZuulMoG said:
EDIT-- And I use negative Con as the lower threshold of death too, but I'm going to add the Disabled until at - your Con mod because it's BRILLIANT!

If you saw my earlier post we use the negative Con as the death threshold, but not the negative Con mod as the disabled point; we actually use one-half the Con attribute, so with a Con of 14 you are disabled until -7 where you start dying and dead at -14.
 




the Jester said:
It's pronounced JEE- tush. I think it's French or something.

*grin*

Gygax in French would be pronounced [zh]igaks. For [zh], use the sound of the s in vision or pleasure. Yeah, that sounds like j, except with the hard 'd' sound you Anglo put in j, saying djack instead of jack.

My trivial house-rules:
  • Skill points: You get BSP+Int bonus skill points at each level, not BSP+Int modifier. (Where BSP is base skill points, for example, 2 for cleric or 8 for rogues.)
    The result? A dumb fighter still get two skill points per level. And animals get two skill points per level, two.
  • Cross-class skill ranks cost one skill point, not two. However, when you gain a level in a class, you can't increase cross-class skills above (character level+3)/2. If you have the Able Learner feat, this cross-class skill limit is increased by 50% (resulting in (character level+3)×3/4).
  • Caster level is a function of HD, and stacks, just like BAB and saves. Fractional progression is used.
    • Cleric, druid, sorcerer, and wizard use a full progression.
    • Bards, monks, and adepts use a 2/3 progression.
    • Barbarian, fighter, paladin, ranger, rogue, aristocract, commoner, expert and warrior use a 1/2 progression.
  • Ranger chose a type (excluding humanoids and outsiders) or a subtype for their favored enemies. For example, a ranger can chose fire subtype creatures as his favored enemy, he'll gain his FE bonus against red dragons, salamanders, and fire giants, but not against blue dragons, tojanida, or hill giants.
  • Azers have the dwarf subtype, aasimar and tieflings have the human subtype, spriggans have the gnome subtype, and so on.
  • Several new subtypes (avian, canine, feline, equine, etc.) have been added. Animals have subtypes. So a crocodile will have the reptilian subtype, a hippogriff will have the avian and equine subtypes, and a sphinx will have the avian and feline subtypes.

The last one being the most trivial of all. But added subtypes help. See that drow class in Faiths & Pantheons were one get to command "spiderkind" creatures, with spiderkind creatures being then defined by a long list that doesn't include anything from the FF and MM3. Or the Scalykind domain that lets one rebuke and command a long list of scaly creatures.

I use many more creature subtypes, spell descriptors, and feat categories than WotC do.
 

In Star Wars, a truly horrible pun or inappropriate sexual joke is rewarded with "Greedo". This is a Greedo Star Wars action figure that you must prominantly display in front of you at the table. In addition, your miniature figure is changed to the "jedi guardian" SW mini (if jedi) or Rodian Merc (if non-jedi) for as long as you have Greedo. You may elect to pass Greedo off to another Player if they make a worse pun or joke, usually by informal group concensus.

We've experimented with "Ewok" and "Jar-Jar" (with appropriate mini and action figure) but stuck with Greedo, mainly because we have alot of those guardian mini's and everyone's a jedi...

We also had a D&D one: If someone defames the prophet: they must die. Needless to say, we tried our dangest to avoid making comments about the variety of soothesayers wandering the DM's world...
 


Vraille Darkfang said:
Calling for severing a finger to use a feat is waaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy too much to ask for. Most characters only get 5-6 feats for their ENTIRE existence. A feat you can only use 10 times (maximum, without a regen spell) seems to me a way to say:

"This is the wost, stupiest feat ever & I want to make darn sure no one will ever, ever, take it."

Then, of course you'll just get some min/maxer to play a troll archer & make the whole reason for outlawing it seemingly obvious.

Just house-rule you don't like the feat, you don't alllow it in your game. Makes better sense to me.

Well, for the most part the effect is the same as if I had banned the feat. The truth is that I'd love to have a troll PC (trolls are rather 'special' in my world) and I'd be willing to let them have this feat if they were trolls. Further, the regenerate spell does make this at least plausable. Finally, I don't mind its power -- just its flavor. If you can come up with a way within the game to trump that, I don't have any problems with it anymore.
 

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