What's the strangest house rule you've ever heard of?

[melkoriii]

I hurd on this board (over a year ago) that the DM had all rolls rerolled if they were less then the average.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Back in 2E days, we endured a “Play Yourself” campaign. The basic idea was that the PCs were the gamers that sat at the table, and we had gotten zapped into the Forgotten Realms for some unknown reason. So, it was a lot of fun in that we were allowed to meta-game to a certain extent and we could make jokes that were normally out of game type stuff (when one skinny guy was described as wearing a black leather outfit, we got, “oh my god, it’s the Gimp!” (From Pulp Fiction) and one PC inspired some downtrodden Underdark dwellers with a speech from ‘Braveheart.’

Anyhow, one guy (the main DM) insisted there was a ruling that allowed a mage to use two wands. Of course, this guy’s PC in the Play Yourself campaign was a mage that wielded two wands – zapping the battlefield with his twin lightning bolts every round. Of course, he also gave everybody the stats of their PCs and insisted on giving himself a 17 in intelligence and charisma (we had to talk him down from 18 in INT, with the argument that Raistlin was only a 17 INT…) In the meantime, this guy had to go to a calculator to add numbers that went over single digits, and nobody would game with this guy if his best friend (a DM on Friday nights) didn’t insist on some other guys coming over on Saturday nights.

 

[ForceUser]

I'm firmly of the opinion that it's always the odd man out that's wrong. So if there's one chess player in a swashbuckling group, he's wrong. Likewise the one loose cannon in a game full of chess players is also wrong.

PS

You've summed up my greatest concern with my current game group. I'm the swashbuckler, they are the chess players. But they are longtime friends and I'm loathe to not play with them anymore.

 

[Zappo]

Back in 2E days, we endured a “Play Yourself” campaign.

Ow. I am firmly convinced that in a scale of bad ideas from 1 to 10, any "play yourself" campaign automatically gets a -5 penalty. Determining stats is an exercise in embarassment, and then it gets worse.

 

[themaxx]

Play someone a lot like you?

Ow. I am firmly convinced that in a scale of bad ideas from 1 to 10, any "play yourself" campaign automatically gets a -5 penalty. Determining stats is an exercise in embarassment, and then it gets worse.

Well, I think it could be fun if you used a standard metric, like point buy or maybe dice rolling and then assigning to stats. More like "Modeled on yourself" than "Play yourself" but then again, this was in a fantasy world where one guy was a wizard.

 

[Halivar]

I find it oddly disturbing that in a thread titled "What's the strangest house rule you've ever heard of?", half the posts are from DM's using the term "IMC".

Just wondering if anyone else noticed.

 

[MeepoTheMighty]

In second edition I went all out on the initiative options.

You declared your action at the beginning of the round and rolled a d10 wanting low. Add in weapon speeds or casting time, minus dex modifier and magical weapon bonuses. Lowest goes first, ties can happen.

If you had multiple attacks it came in at different times. If you had two attacks it would be a sequence before normal init and after normal init. If you used an offhand weapon however, that extra attack came at normal initiative. If multiple people had multiple attacks the early and late init sequences were determined by their init roll for the round.

If you were damaged as you were casting a spell (in the segment of the casting time) you lost the spell. If you were damaged before you began casting the spell you could decide to drop your action for the round and not lose the spell but not do anything else for the round.

Things go a little quicker now in 3e.

That's not all that far off from 2e by the book.

 

[Hypersmurf]

That's not all that far off from 2e by the book.

And somewhat simpler than 1E by the book

-Hyp.

 

[Severion]

I hurd on this board (over a year ago) that the DM had all rolls rerolled if they were less then the average.

That may have been me. Thats how IMC you roll hit points and cure spells. Been doing it that way since 1e.

 

[Coredump]

Back in 2E days, we endured a “Play Yourself” campaign.

I played in a campaign like this once. But before the game, the DM surveyed a number of people that knew us to get their opinions of the stats, he then averaged them and went with that.

(OTOH, due to other reasons, he ran it with us all being fighters.)