Who plays DnD without messing with it?

[Krieg]

One game is a straight Wizards products only 3.5 game and and the other is probably going to end so it doesn;'t really matter.

Does that include Unearthed Arcana? *whistles innocently*

Essentially, I feel the rules are a starting point. I write up a campaign, tweak the set of rules that are closest to the feel of the campaign concept, and go from there. Maybe if I were to use Eberron I would more or less use D20 RAW, but even if I did that there would be some serious tweaks.

Why? Because I am trying to create the campaign that I and my players will really like. In the end, the setting is more important that the rules.

The last sentence has me a bit confused. Aren't your previous comments essentially stating the opposite? That the rules in fact do matter? If they didn't then you wouldn't feel a need to change them.

Am I correct?

 

[MonsterMash]

I tweak therefore I am!

 

[Turanil]

It seems that there are lots of people who are want to mess with DnD (spell points rather than spells per day or something). I on the other hand am content to play DnD as it is.

There is obviously great advantages in not messing up the game. Nonetheless, I can't help but mess. I don't know why apart that it let me express my creativity...

I voted undecided. In fact I am decided, but I have two (in fact four, but well) campaign projects. One of them, a "Warhammer d20" is a total mess I can tell you. Grim Tales + D&D + UA + AU + new magic system + Beyond Countless Doorways + a revisited Warhammer setting... Then the other one is meant to be a straight Dragonlance campaign. However, even there I already plan to mess up things, although much less: adding 3.5 psionics but telling it's another kind of sorcery, and adding many UA variant classes, and finally setting will be a mixture of War of the Lance and Fourth Age of Mortals. So it will remain clean D&D, yet with little tweakings here and there.

 

[Devilkiller]

I said that I'm happy with the system as is, but upon reflection I find that I mess with things just an itsy bit. I made guns a little more powerful than they are in the DMG. They aren't powerful enough that any PC has bothered to use one though, so I guess it wasn't such a big change after all. Other than that I stick to the rules pretty closely though. The two "house rules" which come to mind are that you don't need spellcaster levels to use Craft [Alchemy] and we often decide who gets targeted by a random attack or other unfortunate event by using a "Luck Roll". The Luck Roll is basically just a Charisma check. One of my 2e DMs created it in an attempt to stop people from using Chr as a dump stat. It didn't help much, but I think the mechanic itself is fairly solid.

 

[Gundark]

The reason that I did this thread and poll is that I find if I tinker then I end up screwing up a rules that ends up being overpowering. I have tinkered in the past and it has come back to bite me.

 

[Gaiden]

While I would say that the system is still d20, I have made quite a few changes to 3.5. Almost every change is incorporation of a mechanic or flavor from an earlier system (either 2.0 or 3.0) and is motivated by my sense of realism. For example, I include weapon proficiency slots, although I don't use the Unearthed Arcana version. I include facing rules from UA (although this is a total pain in the rear in terms of streamlining it with the host of splat material and 3rd party material out there). I keep the magnitude of DR in 3.0 but switch the DR-negation to 3.5 (makes iron golems mean mother F&[!ers.) I have edited about a 5th of the feats and have made minor changes to most classes.

The majority of my changes are personal balance preferences: I see no reason to delay turn undead for the paladin to 4th - I think 3rd level is fine, I see no reason to not give Monks evasion at 1st level, when a creature has an elemental subtype I make them take double damage from their opposition element, not 1.5x, I let haste function as 3.0 or 3.5 - your choice upon casting, etc., etc., etc. There are really only x mechanical changes I've made. The first, as mentioned above is the introduction of facing rules. I like this because it makes much more sense to me (sneaking up on a guard when his back is turned, "backstabbing", etc.). The second is the 3.0 cover rules. I like to define a specific amount of cover a person has - a flat bonus is not descriptive enough for me. The third is the maintaining of standard vs. partial actions. Too many situations arise because of my house rules that would require partial actions and since to me it is all semantics anyway, I keep them. The fourth is the acknowledgement of the convention and by definition the arbitrariness of rounds: the concept of rounds only applies to n parties where each of the n parties is involved in the combat, if party j comes along, each i'th party is treated as a noncombatant with respect to j meaning all that that entails (the possibility of a surprise round for j, etc.). The fifth, is the most drastic and is something I haven't completed yet: the reintroduction of spheres with major and minor access - this is the most mechanically involved in terms of keeping balance. I haven't even finalized the spell list for each sphere .

If anyone is interested in the specifics I have been compiling them into microsoft files and can send them by email.

 

[Falkus]

The worst campaign I was ever in was a mish-mash of house rules thrown together that made survival virtually impossible. The DM was a self-confessed advocate of the idea that DnD is the players versus the DM. A good session was one in which only two people lost their characters. One guy went through three characters in one session.

 

[FireLance]

I voted "happy with the rules as is", but on reflection, that isn't really true. I do tweak some aspects of the game, e.g. fixed hit points, equipment value refreshes whenever a character gains a level (and the character can select whatever equipment he wants), and action points. I also tweak the action point system so that Charisma modifies the number of action points that a character gets. I haven't made any major changes to the rules, though.

 

[Gothic_Demon]

I voted undecided because I have two campaigns on the go: One a completely unmodified d20 RAW, the other a massive re-write using spell points, all casters spontaneous, open-ended d20 rolls and many other changes.

I don't think either is better than the other, just that they fit different groups of players better.

 

[DSC-EricPrice]

<soapbox>
I'm a would-be publisher, so take this with a grain of salt.

We change stuff. We have to. One of the things we are looking at right now is the issue of facing and square monsters.

While we can appreciate that bipeds could conceivably be moving and shifting during the round, we reject that rule applies for things like the Frost Worm, Purple worms, Dragons, Snakes, and every other creature that is long. For that reason we created a Long subtype, that has some specific rules about what squares are threatened. Right now were toying with the idea of spot and listen checks (at a penalty) for long creatures to NOTICE the areas behind them. Obviously that means more math and more dice rolling. We've also been working to counterbalance the change by describing some abilities to these long creatures, including the ability to roll over or shift while moving (to squish people beside them), and the ability to tail slap (if applicable, and including as a readied action) if the creature IS aware of someone behind them.

We also consider that it takes a full round action to turn a horse around, assuming you have the room to do it.

All in all, we just believe the rules can always be refined, and that some rules were made just to forward an agenda (*cough* skirmisher game *cough*) with little real consideration for realism and storytelling.

</soapbox>