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View Full Version : How 'By the Books' is your Group?



Tormsskull
2007-03-28, 09:44 AM
Different groups have different playstyles. When I DM I usually add a lot of homebrewed creatures, items, spells, skills, feats, and abilities into the game. I find that making custom addons for D&D allow me to add more flexibility to a campaign and be able to present different types of challenges than book-only stuff.

So, as a group, do you stick completely by the books or do you add in a lot of homebrew?

(Poll forthcoming, be patient)

storybookknight
2007-03-28, 09:46 AM
HAHAHAHAHA Not. Not by the books at all. Aside from the homebrew PrCs, magic items, etc.; when I DM, I cheat. It makes the game more fun!

Galathir
2007-03-28, 10:43 AM
We generally go by the books, but all the DM's like to houserule, homebrew and otherwise change some things. I don't know that it gets to 25%, but it is certainly noticable.

Indon
2007-03-28, 10:56 AM
We run a number of games in which we cycle DM's in my group, so we range from 25% to "I'm still working on my completely homebrewed world, we might run it sometime later".

mikeejimbo
2007-03-28, 10:59 AM
Our group is similar to Indon's in that respect. For us it depends on our current DM.

Fax Celestis
2007-03-28, 11:07 AM
The games I run are significantly altered but still recognizable as D&D.

Telonius
2007-03-28, 11:12 AM
We definitely throw in a few custom items and houserules. Maybe not as much as 25%, but certainly more than none.

Roderick_BR
2007-03-28, 11:13 AM
We use the books, and then househule anything we think is broken or stupid.

talsine
2007-03-28, 11:15 AM
he run almost exclusively by the book save for some spell/equipment nerfs

Diggorian
2007-03-28, 11:21 AM
Conservatively gauging 50% with the vitality points, action points, class talent trees, weapon groups, expanded masterworking, variable DR armor ... and then there's magic.

It's D&D 3.82, available only in Lansing, Michigan. :smallbiggrin:

Emperor Tippy
2007-03-28, 11:41 AM
As a DM I do whatever I'm inclined to do. Custom items, feats, etc.

My players get the rules and errata for all the books we are playing with (which is almost all of them). They can use anything in any of them. And if one of them wants custom stuff then I will work with them to create it.

silentknight
2007-03-28, 12:22 PM
By the book almost exclusively. I have a couple of house rules, but nothing major.

Latronis
2007-03-28, 03:34 PM
Once we ran a game where everyone was DM and a player simultaneously just like a textbased rpg

good fun

I tend to run things mostly mostly homebrewed, not even conistently between campaigns

PnP Fan
2007-03-28, 05:02 PM
We use a lot of homebrew rules that alter the way the game is played overall, but we don't go so far as to change base classes or monsters or anything like that. For example, we use a Luck attribute, we also give max hp per level, we often use non WotC material, etc. . . but nothing truly customized, more like tweeks to the system to make it more fun for us.

Overlord
2007-03-28, 05:04 PM
Oops. I thought that said what percentage of the core rules do you use, so I voted 75%.

That was stupid of me.

In reality the homebrew ratio hovers between 10-25%.

Dhavaer
2007-03-28, 05:05 PM
Mostly by the book, but warping quite a lot. Mostly excising the holdovers from D&D.

Lord Tataraus
2007-03-28, 05:17 PM
I DM with mostly by-the-book with a couple additions to fit my homebrew worlds and some fixes and 'improvements' (no gnomes) to keep my sanity, so more like 15%.

Matthew
2007-03-29, 04:57 PM
Very 'by the book' when playing D&D 3.x, which I use for short Campaigns and one off Adventures in prefabricated settings, and not at all 'by the book' when playing (A)D&D, which I use for long Campaigns in a homebrew setting.

Subotei
2007-03-29, 05:12 PM
We tend to never let the rules stand in the way of a good game. Life is too short.

Accolon
2007-03-30, 10:44 AM
Cool post. I DM the group and I add a lot of stuff to the game. We have a rules lawyer though, so we're also pretty much by the book on a lot of cases. As a group we like to tinker with some rules, but in general, we're about 50%.

ocato
2007-03-30, 10:51 AM
We like to make up our own monsters a lot. It helps with the accidental metagaming of having seen all these jerks before.

Oh noes! a troll [sacrastically] what ever shall we do.
*throws his torch at it and goes to find a pointy stick to draw in the dirt with*

That and adjusting some stuff (Diplomacy, for example) so about 10-25%.

Jaguira
2007-03-30, 01:22 PM
My currant DM lets us fudge on stuff, so long as we provide a good explination. Example: I'm playing a 3rd level Druid with a Dire Wolf compaion/mount. My explination for having a Dire Wolf before 4th level is that my Druid received the Dire Wolf as a baby when she started her training. We also tend to skip over some things that are just generall inconvineint, like making a Handle Animal check every time you tell your companion to do something. Yeah, we don't do that.

Starsinger
2007-03-30, 01:44 PM
In our group, we almost always remove "class skills-cross class skills", who on earth, or Toril, or wherever else have you, is WotC to tell me that my 15 year old human Sorcerer can't be as good of a dancer as a bard. So if she goes dancing every night, why can't she have full ranks in it? Not to mention it alleviates the need for Fighters to multi-class for good listen checks.

Which isn't adding stuff, so much as taking stuff out.

Latronis
2007-03-30, 02:59 PM
In our group, we almost always remove "class skills-cross class skills", who on earth, or Toril, or wherever else have you, is WotC to tell me that my 15 year old human Sorcerer can't be as good of a dancer as a bard.

because a bard learns how to dance the sorcerer just shakes her pretty rear end

Starsinger
2007-03-30, 03:28 PM
But why are Sorcerers incapable of learning how to dance? Why are fighters incapable of listening as well as rogues. Do Rogues get special ears as a class feature?

Dire Cohort
2007-03-30, 03:33 PM
My group is nearly 100% by the books. We have (what seems to a newbie to be) a lot of books, so we're able to pull in a lot of diversity. But almost everything seems to come from this monster manual, or that chapter of the published campaign setting, or whatever. The one house rule we have, institutionalized just recently, regards death and action points (we're in Eberron). If you take a hit that would drop you to -10 or less, you can burn 5 AP to go to -9 (or something really, really low - hasn't happened to me yet). It isn't by the books, but it's roughly equivalent to the DM cheating, which in moderation is by the books.