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

[JacktheRabbit]

Heard of, never played : 6 second rule. You had six seconds to 'DO' everything that your character needed to do. That includes roles free actions, partial actions, hasted actions, cleaving, etc... From what I understood the DM took about 5 minutes on his turn and the players had 6 seconds each. 2 sessions of frustrated players and the DM was voted off the island.

I use such a rule but its 15 seconds and its only for the player to fully explain what he is doing. This kept players from playing "chess" on their turn and careful map out every possible move before making it.

 

[Kershek]

Heard of, never played : 6 second rule. You had six seconds to 'DO' everything that your character needed to do. That includes roles free actions, partial actions, hasted actions, cleaving, etc... From what I understood the DM took about 5 minutes on his turn and the players had 6 seconds each. 2 sessions of frustrated players and the DM was voted off the island.

The DM is going to take 5 minutes whether or not the rule is in place. The rule is for the players, and can be very helpful to keep the game moving. Though, I would probably make it a 30 second rule to be a little more attainable.

 

[Kershek]

I use such a rule but its 15 seconds and its only for the player to fully explain what he is doing. This kept players from playing "chess" on their turn and careful map out every possible move before making it.

Unless, of course, that's how people like to play to make it fun for them.

 

[der_kluge]

You know, I have 16 pages* of house rules, and nothing in that is even remotely close to some of the bizarre things I'm seeing here.


*11 pages is for PrCs, and new classes.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

Unless, of course, that's how people like to play to make it fun for them.

It is never fun for everyone else while that person does this. It is also never fun for me. This is not chess.

Carefully mapping out where your fireball would land so it kills 3 foes in different areas but falls just short of all your fellow party members is not fun at all. It is both tedious and unrealistic. A round is 6 seconds you act and mistakes get made.

To be fair I do the same. I dont carefully map out my every move and evil mages often blast allies or underlings by mistake with their fireballs.

 

[Fenes 2]

If everyone is on the same wavelength, "chess D&D" can be fun, although ime such games usually were more a group effort, or even a one-man show.

Nothing worse though than a "chessplayer" holding up the game looking for the perfect "move" when the rest of the group and the DM just want some fast-paced swashbuckling action full of slapstick and panache.

 

[WayneLigon]

I've run across some odd 'flavor' house rules, like:

1. All magic is evil, and eventually only evil comes from it. (Ah, so the CLW spell you just did will eventually come back to haunt me? Ooookay.)
2. All magic is good, and evil spellcasters eventually are dealt with by it (why are we adventureing, again?)

Oh, here's a bizarre one.

Dragons are sources of primodial might. They are power incarnate. And they are apparently delicious.

Being power incarnate, some part of a dragon holds that power within itself, be in the blood, the bones, the teeth or the heart. Indeed, any part of the dragon from it's liver to his eyes could hold its power and lucky is the adventurer who finds said part and consumes it, for they gain some permanent ability.

This led to us hunting dragons, blowing them out of the sky, then literally leaping upon them to discover what part of this particular dragon was magical. Then fight over who go to consume what. This led to such glorious exclamations of valor as 'It's in the heart! The heart!' - everyone dives for the poor beasts heart, carving chunks of raw dragon and bolting them, then waiting for the effect to take place. 'Wow, I can see in the dark!' or 'Man, I'm a lot stronger all of a sudden'.

Not so much an eye-rolling terrible rule, but man was it funny.

More to come as I remember them.

 

[Kershek]

It is never fun for everyone else while that person does this. It is also never fun for me. This is not chess.

Carefully mapping out where your fireball would land so it kills 3 foes in different areas but falls just short of all your fellow party members is not fun at all. It is both tedious and unrealistic. A round is 6 seconds you act and mistakes get made.

To be fair I do the same. I dont carefully map out my every move and evil mages often blast allies or underlings by mistake with their fireballs.

Well, that's your opinion. When the wizard casts an area effect, he pulls out his area cutout and shifts it around until the most enemies are affected. We have no problem with this. In fact, if someone else sees a mistake, they'll say, "Just shift it over a little and you'll get more bad guys!" This is great and we all enjoy seeing people maximize their character potential. There's no way to emulate a wizard with a 20+ intelligence, so taking a little extra time to get the perfect shot, IMO, is a great way to emulate it. It doesn't really take that much time, anyways.

We help each other out all the time. If we see someone take a bad route, someone will inevitably speak up and say, "but go around here and you won't get an AoO!" It would be obvious to the character at the scene, but we don't always catch it the way it's presented to us on a grid.

 

[Hob Marshmallowfoot]

Everyone remember weapon speed? Well we played for several years in a game where initiative was calculated by brief algebraic equation to generate a number between 1 and 10

[(10+ws)/2] - dex bonus, with multiple attack happening half way toward te end orf the round.

So my halflng rolls a 5 with his short sword and a dex bonus of 2... he goes on 2 (5+3)/2)-2, and again on 6 if he ha another attack, and again on 8 if he has a third.

Movement was done 12' per initiative number(2.5 squares on the battle map), and if your spellcaster declared multiple spellcasting he could roll a d4 + the casting time and just cast again then, or d6 + ct for a new spell.

Another quirky rule: if you rolled a '0', which was very possible, you could roll again, andother '0', and you could roll again wihtthe lowest possible outcome being a 1. At that point you had two fee attacks or maybe even movements on zero... except for missile fire, which could only get one.

I had a halfling with 19 dex for the entire game and he routinely got 4 or 5 attacks off in a round with daggers...

Also, we died. A lot.
The game was wonderful, but I prefer the old d20 + your modifier personally...

 

[jasper]

the house rule from my 15 minute game
1983 fort ord california
Dm and other players used the SENTENCE of monks take no damage on a saving throw to mean monks saved vs damage on all damage!
For those who didn't play first edition. Monks can make a save and get no damage after a fall if the monk is so many feet near a wall.

Wall of stone, iron, ice could be cast in the air about the monsters head.