PDA

View Full Version : A Question of House-Ruling



bugfoxmaster
2010-06-19, 09:14 PM
Hey all.
I'll be DMing a Pathfinder campaign starting soon, and have been looking over potential flaws and houserules and such.

I'll cut straight to the chase. I've been looking around on these forums, and have seen a houserule that, on skill checks, makes natural 20 = 25 and natural 1 = -4. This preserves the 'special' rolls' feel, while simultaneously avoid halflings jumping to the moon. This also allows traps not to be made practically inane by level 10 (where a rogue or bard putting a skill rank in Disable Device every level will literally find it impossible to fail the roll (DC 25) by 5 or more), and, I feel, allows a more exciting game at times, since the heroes can do some awesome things by rolling a 20.

So, thoughts? I'd like some opinions on whether or not anyone here who's tried this rule could tell me how it's worked out, whether it's enjoyable, and, well, overall whether it's worth applying in my own game.

Rixx
2010-06-19, 09:16 PM
That's a neat one, but I'd change the penalty for rolling a 1 to -5 to match the +5 for rolling a 20.

Raiki
2010-06-19, 09:24 PM
I actually played in an epic game where, to avoid the problem of lvl 1 commoners hitting our 55 AC swashbuckler 5% of the time, and the raging barbarian from missing those same commoners another 5% of the time. We treated a roll of a natural 20 to be a 30, and a 1 to be a -10. It actually worked out fairly well, though I'm not sure if the +10/-10 thing would work as well in earlier levels.

~R~

jokey665
2010-06-19, 09:25 PM
That's a neat one, but I'd change the penalty for rolling a 1 to -5 to match the +5 for rolling a 20.
Math. Learn it.

(Hint: 1-5=-4)

Knaight
2010-06-19, 09:34 PM
Of course, the DMG lists the count a 20 as a 30 rule and count a 1 as -10, furthermore D&D treats 10, not 10.5 as average, so between the rule and the idea of defining extremes as a certain distance from the norm (infinite when looking at auto fail, auto succeed cases) -5 makes just as much sense as -4.

grarrrg
2010-06-19, 09:38 PM
Math. Learn it. (Hint: 1-5=-4)

There are also aesthetic considerations, in which case -5 "looks" more correct.
Also, as Raiki said, his game uses attack rolls of 1 as -10 and attack rolls of 20 as 30 (+10), although this makes slightly more sense, as a 1 is normally treated as an unmodifiable 0 (that is, the entire attack roll, after modifiers is essentially 0 -> miss)

Shouldn't make a huge difference either way though, because you still have to roll a nat 1 for it to be relavant.