Houserules for running WLD, feedback and supplements

[Ansem]

I'm going to DM the module Worlds Largest Dungeon for my group and want to establish houserules up front.
I currently have the following ones set already:


Ability scores:
32 point buy
of
24point buy & LA+1 race


Rules: a live without luxury
No animal companions obtainable, control spells such as entangle etc don't work.
Druid is ****ed concerning wildshape and animal companion, Wizard is ****ed concerning spellbook, limited options to learn new spells (but not unable or impossible to, advised to take Eidetic spellcaster = no spellbook needed but lose familiar + scribe scroll).
XP rate is 10-25% instead of 100%, also don't plan equipment, gotta live with what you get.
For spells, take care of material components! (take Eschew Materials feat) as you won't have access to a material component pouch or it will have limited uses.
Extra feats are granted at certain levelups, surprise for when ^^
Characters will naturally develop traits after long environmental influences.
Not possible to use teleportation, scrying or planar travelling spells of any form. (Exception, short range teleport like blink that allows a few ft.)
No take 10 or take 20
Backstory of background and personal motivation/characteristics of ½ A4 (full A4 is better).
No backstory is no reward for it, so you'll miss out on small bonuses.
Clerics are allowed healing domain no matter which deity.(makes healing devotion an easy feat choice + bonus healing spells)

I am going to run a little rascal through the Dungeon which the players may encounter 1/level or less which will be a gestalt Wizard20/Artificer20 which would supply them with items and goods, might even save their asses if they're trying enough not to die.

Was also considering of granting the skill focus feats +4/+5 instead of +3, better for skill focus open lock, healing and disable device.

Anything else to take care of or something that you would change. (suggest it to me, but DM's word is final ^^).
Certain races/classes could be banned because they're too inefficient or will just **** around (think of characters to attempt burrowing themselves out at lvl 1).
Also was considering granting an extra feat at lvl 5 and 10 to help them out a bit, I really want them to make it.

Characters naturally developing traits would be that after 5 or 10 levels a human would develop low light vision and sensitivity to brightlight/daylight due to living underground and adapting for so long. Or a person who keeps being hit by poison would get a bonus of +2 eventually to resist it.

All help and feedback is appreciated, thanks in advance.

[AuraTwilight]

Rules: a live without luxury

I don't understand what this rule means.


XP rate is 10-25% instead of 100%

The book strongly advises 50%. 10-25% is going to get them killed unless you seriously easy-mode the dungeon.

Also, the loot in WLD is terrible-to-worthless. Will you be changing it?


For spells, take care of material components! (take Eschew Materials feat) as you won't have access to a material component pouch or it will have limited uses.

Why would you do this?


No take 10 or take 20

Several important skill checks are borderline impossible with this rule. Why are you insisting on it?



Backstory of background and personal motivation/characteristics of ½ A4 (full A4 is better).

What does this mean?

[Ansem]

I don't understand what this rule means.
Its a pun

The book strongly advises 50%. 10-25% is going to get them killed unless you seriously easy-mode the dungeon.

Also, the loot in WLD is terrible-to-worthless. Will you be changing it?
I've read different, plus I'll level them when I decide which is the appropriate level per part. Loot is dealt with by the Merchant DMPC.

Why would you do this?
You don't have the bloody luxury to get all your fancy twigs and frog legs at Worlds Largest Dungeon Mart.

Several important skill checks are borderline impossible with this rule. Why are you insisting on it?
Module pretty much states it's highly advised to ban this even more than using Druids.

What does this mean?
Means they get rewarded for putting effort in their characters.
Someone with a backstory of having always helped the needy and wounded and eventually helping a trapped Orc inside the dungeon would get a reward from him and roleplay XP. They might encounter someone from their part stuck there too, like the Chieftain who killed your parents and suddenly holds your heirloom Sword (could be a +3 flaming longsword).

I'm going to run this module to learn them to support teamplay and stop being selfish jerks(so they'll not roleplay themselves for once), I won't sugarcoat the module itself so they'll be stuck with the loot they get and the choices they make.

Character dies is character dead.

[bekeleven]

I hope you make them roll walking checks every round and on a natural one, they trip and take 1d6 damage.

So Real!

I also hope when your rogue tries to open a door, he rolls open lock until he gets a natural 20, just to make sure that he's unable to open it with his current modifier, even if it takes 30 real-life minutes of rolling.

So Dynamic!

That, or taking 10 and taking 20 are incredibly convenient ease-of-use mechanics and WLD is truly moronic for suggesting they be removed.

[Gavinfoxx]

Here's a thing I post every time I see someone bring up WLD... this sort of stuff is vital to know...

WLD really kinda sucks in several quite profound ways... I have a big series of questions to ask GMs / For players to ask GMs / For groups to figure out and agree on, whenever someone says 'I am playing / GMing a WLD game!'


Which houserules does the GM enforce or not for WLD? Everyone should be on the same page regarding these things, and it should all be out in the open, before the players even think of making their characters!

1.) For characters that can invest resources in 'burrowing', 'earthgliding', and 'burrowing through stone' (there are several ways to do this, including Wild Shaping into a Thoqqua, for example, which specifically also leaves a usable tunnel...), are the use of their abilities nerfed? Are inner room walls impervious as *well as* the obviously impervious outer walls? IE, will player characters sometimes be able to scout or bypass rooms in this way?

2.) For characters who invest in being able to do things with crafting materials, will the DM be using the standard lack of crafting supplies in this dungeon? Or will supplies be found, or will you be able to convert GP value in items to generic crafting supplies at a particular ratio with a particular amount of time?

3.) For characters who can replace animal companions or such things via summoning them, either a few times a day or via a 24 hour ritual, will those abilities work as advertised? What if characters want to release your existing animal companion and summon a new one? What about the magical paladin pokeball-mounts? Do those work normally?

4.) For characters that invest in short range teleports, or becoming ethereal or intangible, or things like that, do those work as advertised? At least for interior areas?

5.) For characters that expect to be able to Take 10 or Take 20 on skills, do those work as in the PHB? Or is that nerfed, as the dungeon suggests? If you can't search things reliably, after all, you don't end up at the more interesting rooms...

6.) For characters that invest in having access to, say, an Extended Rope Trick at level 5, does that work as advertised, to get access to a safe space? What are your rulings on Extradimensional or nondimensional spaces working in the dungeon? What if a Wizard wants to actually scribe scrolls, will the DM be hand-waving the exotic inks necessary to do so? Maybe just subtract a GP worth of value of loot to do this? What if an Easy Bake Wizard (it's a named build using a few combinations of techniques) wants to spend some time scribing scrolls to his brain by burning incenses, will those be placed as treasure?

7.) Will the DM be making intelligent adjustments to the 'security' of rooms or wandering monster based issues based on intelligent barricading techniques? Will the DM be enforcing the 'most locations are very dangerous and have hourly wandering monster rolls' rule? What if the party attempts to barricade themselves in one of the rooms that is NOT specifically marked as an obvious saferoom?

8.) Will the DM be changing the treasure of the module? Most of the treasure of the module is supposedly completely useless -- ie, 'art', or 'not equipment' sorts of things, or things that doesn't actually HELP, or things too large to be taken, and thus doesn't actually help the party. Alternately, is the DM relaxing the restrictions on the feat 'Ancestral Relic', ie, it's the only real way to appropriately sacrifice the crappy treasure (like a huge amount of material you can't change to useful gear because it's too big) to make useful equipment, maybe give it out as a bonus feat or not make it 'good aligned only'? Is this feat suggested or appropriate for this particular campaign of World's Largest Dungeon? For example, have everyone start out with an Ancestral Relic of an item that takes up one of their item slots, and let them upgrade that item as a custom wondrous item, including the ability to combine with other like-slotted wondrous items and to cast spells as a custom wondrous item?

9.) The module suggests completely banning the entire category of 'battlefield control' spells from the game, and mentions that they will not be placed in the game. Typically, a few pages later, a Web scroll is given out as treasure. Are there any house rules on battlefield control spells?

10.) For characters that want to do summons in general, with 'summoning' spells not actually acting like calling spells (ie, summoning spells don't summon an actual creature from somewhere, they instead summon a mystical 'genericized' example of the creature type in question), will those summoning spells work as normal, or will they be nerfed as the module says?

11.) To lower the mind-crushing banality and the sheer quantity of empty rooms and padding in the dungeon, and increase the rate at which the group can get to interesting things, will the GM be asking everyone for the heuristics that they have when they are going around in hallways, searching 'filler' rooms, or going through places with nothing interesting in them, and their search techniques both in and out of rooms, and then deciding which rooms they get to based on that?

------------------

My suggestion:

Don't screw over wizards, don't screw over druids, give everyone eschew materials for free, don't give stupid xp rules, don't nerf summoning, don't nerf battlefield control, don't nerf take 10 or take 20, don't nerf crafting, don't nerf burrowing through stone or earthgliding, give everyone an item on a neck body slot with ancestral relic working on it, so they can sacrifice gear to fuel their neck slot items, allow combining of like slot items at the cost of 'all but the most expensive costs 1.5x'...

...in short, ignore every piece of advice the module gives, because it is all terrible advice in a terribly designed dungeon.

In fact, the only houserule of yours that I like are:

-Clerics are allowed healing domain no matter which deity.(makes healing devotion an easy feat choice + bonus healing spells)

[Gavinfoxx]

sorry double post

[AuraTwilight]

You don't have the bloody luxury to get all your fancy twigs and frog legs at Worlds Largest Dungeon Mart.

Then why even offer Eschew Materials in the first place, aside from feat-taxing casters so that they can use their abilities without having to empty their wallets every day?

Seriously, the non-significant material components (ala diamonds) are literally jokes.

In that they are actually puns.


Module pretty much states it's highly advised to ban this even more than using Druids.

Yea, and the module is stupid for suggesting so, just like it gives stupid loot. You shouldn't really consider running WLD unless you feel confident to identify which of its custom rules impede or enhance the game. It makes a few blunders.


Means they get rewarded for putting effort in their characters.
Someone with a backstory of having always helped the needy and wounded and eventually helping a trapped Orc inside the dungeon would get a reward from him and roleplay XP. They might encounter someone from their part stuck there too, like the Chieftain who killed your parents and suddenly holds your heirloom Sword (could be a +3 flaming longsword).

I'm going to run this module to learn them to support teamplay and stop being selfish jerks(so they'll not roleplay themselves for once), I won't sugarcoat the module itself so they'll be stuck with the loot they get and the choices they make.

Character dies is character dead.

So they're getting roleplay XP for stuff that happened before the game started? Well damn, my character's a king who abdicated the throne in order to preach enlightenment, selflessness, and compassion to mortal men. His name's Siddhartha and he's a monk with the Vow of Poverty feat. What do I get?

[Ansem]

Thanks for the input but I wont take much of the above as its mostly just criticism and my players want it to be a brutal, horrible experience which they'll crawl through.
Also I roll checks myself, giving them no notice whether they win or fail a bluff.
The fact they failed to disable a trap doesn't mean it's either a masterwork trap or a crappy one, as they won't know they rolled 1 or 20.
@Gavinfoxx, most of your questions are already answered so I'll ignore them.

Still hoping for any feedback to actually put in.

[Darrin]

No animal companions obtainable, control spells such as entangle etc don't work.


Do you still start with an animal companion, and then must keep it alive, or you just never ever get that class feature period? Can you swap your animal companion for something else via an ACF?

How do you define a "control" spell? Do you have a list of "No-No" spells so players are aware of which spells/classes are getting hosed? I guess I'd like to see you clarify if the problem you're trying to fix here is some classes are unbalanced, some spells are unbalanced, or some playing styles are unbalanced. Regardless of which problem you think is the most worrisome, the nerf on battlefield control spells is not a particularly well-thought-out or effective solution.



Druid is ****ed concerning wildshape and animal companion, Wizard is ****ed concerning spellbook, limited options to learn new spells (but not unable or impossible to, advised to take Eidetic spellcaster = no spellbook needed but lose familiar + scribe scroll).


Why exactly won't wildshape work? Because the druid isn't familiar with animals he never has a chance to see? Are druids allowed to use the Shapeshift variant from Unearthed Arcana? (But apparently the wizard can polymorph into anything he likes, even if he's never seen it before?)



XP rate is 10-25% instead of 100%, also don't plan equipment, gotta live with what you get.


That's fine, although you may have to revisit the percentage if the party is leveling too slowly.



No take 10 or take 20


I would reconsider this one. Those rules are for speeding up gameplay. If you really think watching a rogue roll 20 times in a row for every 5' step is an enjoyable roleplaying experience (because that's the kind of mindset you're trying to inspire with WLD)... there are better ways to inspire that sort of mindset without resorting to tedious bloodymindedness.



Backstory of background and personal motivation/characteristics of ½ A4 (full A4 is better).


This seems kind of pointless. Why would I waste my time writing out an elaborate backstory when almost everything I could possibly come up with will be pretty much completely meaningless and unusable due to the fact that my character is trapped inside the WLD. That's pretty much all the backstory WLD needs: "Woke up in WLD. Probably going to die before I get out."



I am going to run a little rascal through the Dungeon which the players may encounter 1/level or less which will be a gestalt Wizard20/Artificer20 which would supply them with items and goods, might even save their asses if they're trying enough not to die.


Make sure he's a gnome that dresses in red robes and speaks in riddles.



Certain races/classes could be banned because they're too inefficient or will just **** around (think of characters to attempt burrowing themselves out at lvl 1).


That sounds a bit contradictory. Digging your way out doesn't sound inefficient or "**** around", it sounds like a perfectly rational way to get out of an underground dungeon.

This rule is probably better addressed with a simpler over-all "Don't be a d-bag" rule.



Also was considering granting an extra feat at lvl 5 and 10 to help them out a bit, I really want them to make it.


That's not really the impression I was getting. It sounds like you have a lot of axes to grind.



Characters naturally developing traits would be that after 5 or 10 levels a human would develop low light vision and sensitivity to brightlight/daylight due to living underground and adapting for so long. Or a person who keeps being hit by poison would get a bonus of +2 eventually to resist it.


How exactly is this different from adventurers who aren't trapped in the WLD? They spend lots of time underground and get poisoned a lot even outside of the WLD.


Thanks for the input but I wont take much of the above as its mostly just criticism and my players want it to be a brutal, horrible experience which they'll crawl through.


I wish you'd mentioned this first, as it makes the rest of your post sound somewhat less antagonistic. As long as you're up front with the players on how you want a brutal, horrible experience, and they're all chomping at the bit for this sort of thing, then that might make for a very interesting campaign, and I hope everyone has fun.


Still hoping for any feedback to actually put in.

The designers of the WLD have made some assumptions and some very klunky rules/suggestions that are not particularly well-thought-out and don't really address the problems they are worried about as effectively as they think they do. I'm not entirely sure how to offer any feedback/advice without hitting the big red "You're doing it WRONG!" button, which will destroy all hope for any meaningful discussion here.

[Ansem]

Everything depends on the argumentation.
So far I've just heard "Don't do this because it won't work" but not why.
Also, the dungeon is made by Celestials, so I simply rule it that impenetrable forces are at work preventing you from digging out.
It seems really unlikely they never thought of digging your way out but did prevent ways for teleporting etc.

[bekeleven]

So far I've just heard "Don't do this because it won't work" but not why.

Again:

Taking 10 is because some actions are trivial. If you aren't rolling a die every round your character is awake it's because you're taking 10 on something. If you remove taking 10, then you roll for everything you can conceivably fail. If walking at your normal rate without falling on rough stone floors has a DC of 0, then a full-plate fighter must roll that literally every round your characters move. If it's a DC of 0 to hear people talking, then any time a character is 10 feet away, OR can conceivably be distracted by something (+5 DC), or has negative wisdom, or it's not totally silent around you (-2 Circumstance, and if you're not making move silently checks - which you also can't take 10 on - then your own armor will be making some sound) then the party can't even speak to each other. So if you remove taking 10 then expect your party's conversations to spend every 5th round restating what they said in round 4 because someone rolled a 2.

Meanwhile, taking 20 is just a time-saving representation of what characters would be doing anyway. If you want your rogue to roll 20 times every time he wants to be sure he can't open a door, be my guest, but it serves no purpose and only lengthens play while pissing players off.

[Angelalex242]

There was one houserule we had in the last game we played.

It's made by Celestials, right? Well, the ward that keeps you from leaving only keeps non GOOD creatures from leaving (Cause really, why would Celestials want to keep themselves and their Priests and Paladins and so on from leaving?)

Neutral and Evil beings are stuck, but there's nothing preventing good creatures from moving back and forth at will. (They figure if something meant to be in here becomes redeemed somehow and becomes good aligned, it deserves to be able to leave.)

Then it proceeds more like a normal D&D game.

Also, I think disallowing take 10 and take 20 was more meant to symbolize "You get exactly ONE chance to find something, indicated by one die roll. You can NEVER try again if you roll bad." Our GM threw that out.

Also, the DM couldn't be arsed to keep drawing the map over and over again, so we had a Lantern Archon guide. It pointed out secret doors, but didn't know how to open them, so we had to figure that out on our own.

We also tended to explore rooms in numerical order after that. The GM was happy, cause he got to prepare for encounters, and we were happy, cause we were sure we didn't miss anything.

[bekeleven]

Also, I think disallowing take 10 and take 20 was more meant to symbolize "You get exactly ONE chance to find something, indicated by one die roll. You can NEVER try again if you roll bad."And if I roll a 1 on my listen check, I can never hear your explanation for this "rule" ever again?

[Angelalex242]

Well, as I just edited, our GM did throw that out.

But it's the only explanation I can think of. And yes, exactly like that.

[Greenish]

Why would you pretend to have Exp if you level them whenever it feels appropriate? Are you expecting them to get lots of crafting done or something?

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Thanks for the input but I wont take much of the above as its mostly just criticism and my players want it to be a brutal, horrible experience which they'll crawl through.

There's a difference, however, between "horrible" as in "this dungeon is brutal and the PCs have to work hard to survive" and "horrible" as in "the designers made a bunch of idiotic rules suggestions that just make things more annoying for the players."

If you want a more lethal experience, none of WLD's suggested houserules will actually help with that, they just require a lot more rolling or bookkeeping (e.g. the take 10 and material components rules), restrict character concepts unnecessarily (e.g. the "screw druids and summoners" rules), or pretend to be effective (e.g. the "Gee, I've heard battlefield control is effective, let's ban that without defining what it means while not banning all the other powerful spells" rules).