Does Anyone Actually Use House Rules?

[Tequila Sunrise]

Every time I try to run a game with house rules, something goes wrong. For example I recently started a group of gamers in NYC--the idea was to get a few of us together, play a monthly game and maybe go bar hopping every once in a while. We met up at a restaurant and a few of us pitched ideas for games that we'd like to run. I told everyone that I was considering running a goofy OotS type game and I got the most number of 'thumbs ups' from all the game ideas. Later that week I declared that each potential DM should write up a short blurb on the game they wanted to run including playstyle and any important house rules. I described my game as "lighthearted and rules-loose" and followed up with a link to my house rules (lucasbuchanan.com/Riven House Rules) because I don't like to catch players off guard with several "oh, I house ruled that!" None of the other prospective DMs wrote anything about the games they wanted to run, but lo and behold when I tallied the votes my game was at the bottom of everyone's list!

It makes me disapointed but the only conclusion I can draw is that my house rules turned everybody off to my game. I love to DM but there are a few things about the game that I just can't accept as-are when I have direct control over them. My house rules are not strange or restrictive by any stretch of the imagination and yet they seem to repulse players at every turn. Does this happen to anyone else?

[Innis Cabal]

honestly and not to be mean...i wouldnt play in a game with those house rules eiter

alot of them make certain class's worse, and of those they do most of them dont need any help doing that.

the way you "roll" for stats would be an instant turn off
your way of leveling is arbitray and nonsensicel. Of course you should level after killing things of appropriate CR not "when the story says you should now be level X"

to answer your question, and i really am trying to be nice, no it dosnt happen to me when i house rule things in. Death from massive damage is one of the things i house rule out, cause at higher level....50 dmg isnt much. Light armor is allowed for sorcerers(since they need something) and thats it. No one ever seems to complain

[Xefas]

I'd have to agree with Innis and say that your House Rules would turn me off as well. Many of them are pointless or needlessly convoluted.

I usually go with a simple "No Death by Massive Damage" and then add from there as the campaign requires. Plus, I make sure to take in everyone's opinion and discuss it with my players every time we're going to instate a house rule; makes sure everyone is happy.

[Somebloke]

Considering the theme of my campaign (low magic rennaissance setting) I need houserules- in fact, in order to get the rules to match the fluff I've had to create a dozen or so, including new classes, spell lists, etc.

The important thing is to consider every rule and all of the consequences of it. One misplaced rule can wreak havoc on a game.

[OneWinged4ngel]

Does Anyone Actually Use House Rules?

Yes. In fact, I use TONS of them. It's a big darned list. And not only have there not been any problems... every single group that I've DMed (quite a few with a variety of different people, especially since I also DM online) for has loved my house rules and chosen to adopt some or all of them for their own campaigns.

So... it's not that houserules suck. Maybe it's just that yours do.

[MagFlare]

I'm confused.


The 20% XP penalty for multiclassing applies to any character with more than two classes...

And yet, from earlier in the document:


No Experience Points: Characters level up at appropriate times during their story arc, not after killing 13.3 monsters of appropriate challeng ratings.

[Hazkali]

My house rules are not strange or restrictive by any stretch of the imagination and yet they seem to repulse players at every turn.

Err...I disagree.



A monk's AC bonus cannot exceed her monk level.

This makes Monks even worse than they are already by making them frail and unable to deal the high damage.



All skills are class skills for all classes.

This is the game-breaker. This gives all classes access to the more powerful skills such as Tumble and UMD, thus rendering the skillmonkey classes useless. If you really want to make having cross-class skills easier, perhaps rule that all class skills cost 1 skill point, but the cap on cross-class skills remains at half the cap for class skills. Thus whilst a cross-classer can never be as good as a classer, they have a bit more flexibility.



If a given action would have you roll more than a handful (4-6) of dice at a time, average out the extra dice.

Why? It doesn't take that long to roll a couple more dice- and players like rolling lots of dice. That's one of the reasons spells like Fireball are so popular.



No Experience Points: Characters level up at appropriate times during their story arc, not after killing 13.3 monsters of appropriate challeng ratings.

This one's definitely not for everyone, and it also brings into question how spells with XP costs, crafting items and so on works. As a player, I wouldn't like not knowing how long I'm going to have to play my Xth level for; I'd like to be able to see my character slowly getting closer to the goal of level X+1.

Ultimately, I would say that I wouldn't want to game with these house rules. That isn't to say that all the house rules are bad- I play with average hit points, and the idea of no Favoured Class and penalties for multiclassing encourage unique character builds and mix-n-matching.

Ultimately, house rules are a choice for both DMs and players. You can't force people to accept house rules that will decrease their enjoyment of a game. If you really want to DM (and an 0ots style game sound like quite a laugh), then perhaps try without house rules, at least until the players start asking for some.

[Yuki Akuma]

It's basically impossible to play D&D without developing some house rules eventually. House rules in general don't turn people off; nonsensical houserules that seem to be there simply for the sake of saying "but my game has house rules!" do.

So, yeah. Your house rules suck and turned everyone away from your game. Better luck next time, although don't expect the players to ever trust you to DM.

[Matthew]

Plenty of people use House Rules. I use them, for one. I don't think making all Skills Class Skills is a big deal, Classes with a plethora of Skill Points are still well ahead. However, there were quite a few pointless House Rules in that document.

On the other hand, it may be that, although a comedy game first seemed like fun, when it came down to it, most of the players realised that they'd rather play in a more serious game. I have seen that happen before, it's no big deal. Sometimes enthusiasm for something just dissipates.

[daggaz]

I dont know.. i wouldnt be so brash and rude as some of the other posters here and just out and out say your rules suck.

Some of them are pretty bad tho, monks ac, all skills = class skills, classes as "guidelines" (this one just opens up a whole can of worms and destroys peoples hard earned notion of stability), your method of stat distribution (average of 12? very low distribution? only two 8's in the deck? Ok this one sucks),...

Lots of the others are pretty much low-luck mods, designed to take the element of risk (crit hits and failures) out of the game. Unfortunately, games that are too safe and static are also lacking in player appeal. Nobody wants to be average.

The iterative attack thing is a mix of both... and it ignores the concept of PowerAttacking and nearly unhittable AC's, which altho it may not be balanced, is simply a mechanical truth of high end games. So this one will bone fighters, and hard, against any opponent that counts.

I can understand the limits on divine spells known, but this is really only needed if your players are known powergamers who will break the game over the other players heads.

And getting rid of all the wierd weapons? Really, whats the point? Spiked chain is the only thing on there that is ever even close to cheese, and then only conceptually for some. As it stands, its just the only exotic weapon useful enough to justify the feat, and it will never make you as powerful as a full caster when it comes to battlefield control.

As for the XP thing, I did the same thing in my game, but quickly realized that my players NEED to have some constant measure of progression. So I now drop in lots of ingame hints as to how they are 'feeling.' "It is still hard to prepare those new spells, but you are getting better" , "As you hew your way thru the undead, you slip into a zone, and your body feels as if it knows the fighting maneuvers innately" , "the old man at the side of the road looks up at you and cackles a toothless grin! 'Keep goin', sonny! Change is in the air it is! Ye'll be a new man tamarraw!"

Anyhow. I would be turned off by your rules, if anything because there are too much of them and put together, I feel they would stifle a game rather than add to it.

[boomwolf]

Interesting houserules, might adopt some.

In any rate, most houserules I use are to nurf casters. (divine magic suffers spell fail like arcane, spells have natural fail chance, there is a "backlash" effect possible when failing concentration. usually result in a painful effect to the caster.)

[Emperor Demonking]

Everyone does. Actually I don't think my Pun-Pun game does.

How many dead characters have you seen carry on fighting.

[Satyr]

I wouldn't like to play D&D just as the rules are laid out; in many cases, I strongly prefer some houserules (even in the case of our houserules who are mostly a result of plundering the ideas of more intelligent people) and the right houserules can easily add a lot of fun - or destroy a lot of frustration sources.
It's a question of taste, I suppose, but I don't like several of the standard rules (e.g. Armor Class, alignments or spellcasters who are easily more powerful than heroes...), and I have found it to be very satisfying to eliminate those.

[Heliomance]

We use some fun house rules. Elves sleep rather than trancing in this game, due to a fundamental difference in what they actually are (it's a homebrew world).
Out fighter frequently owns in combat thanks to a re-ruling on the effects of weapon focus - if you roll full damage on your attack, you get to roll an extra die of damage.. Our fighter has a habit of rolling insanely well, and combining this with a critical. I think he got up to 88 damage at one point last night. At 3rd level. It was fun.

[daggaz]

Hmm.. I nerfed natural spell (its gone) because my druid player is an unabashed munchkin who would abuse it to its fullest. He still outshines the rest of them usually. Resting heals your ClassLevel + Con modifier. Think thats about it for my current game atm...

[SilverClawShift]

I dunno Tequila Sunrise... that's a pretty daunting list to digest before a game, even if every rule was great and made perfect sense i'd be hesitant to start playing a campaign where everything was so much different from the norm.
Remember you've got a list of players who are supposed to REMEMBER all that stuff, just for you. Even if you're a terrific DM, I might not want to have to do a few pages of homework just to enter into your world.

Then, there's the rules themselves.
Some of them, I see where you were going with them, and why you made them. Even those rules are sometimes more work (via remembering and documenting changes) than a game needs to be though.
Some of them, I just don't see the point of.

Simple Iterative Attacks: ...are more complicated than regular iterative attacks, and it's a change I don't even see the point of making. Why? The game's set up with 20/15/10/5 in mind, why fudge it randomly?
No Opposed Rolls: ...why not? I'm not even saying the rule itself is bad, but why? are opposed rolls some kind of problem that needs to be corrected? Why am I remembering this new rule?
Remove two 4s, two 5s, two 6s, two 7s and two 8s from a deck of cards. ...clever and cute actually, and if it were part of a smaller list of house rules, I'd probably nod and say "Sure, I can deal with that". But in such a big list of houserules, my sense of how things are balanced against each other feels threatened and unsure.
There are no half orcs. Same as above. In a smaller list, I'd say "oh, okay". But when left with a list of house rules this big, I'm asking myself why you felt the need to make this distinction. It's not like half-orcs are overpowered, and if half-orcs are now orcs, why no regular orcs?
Death occurs at -1 minus your Constitution score. This makes sense. Constitution determining how hard your grip on life when you're 'mostly-dead' is works logically. The thing is, people are so used to 0 being 'down' and -10 being 'gone' that it just makes me scratch my head as a house rule. It's a layer of complexity that doesn't really add much, when you only have a few rounds to save your friends lives anyway.
Barbarians are not illiterate. ...kay, not a big deal. But it makese me wonder why you felt the need to mention it. It smells like trouble, because it seems like there's more to this than meets the eye, there's a story here I'm not a part of that intimidates me from joining into it.
Great axes deal 2d6 damage. Don't cry for the d12, it doesn't deserve your tears. ...see above
Orc double axes, spiked chains, dire flails, gnome hooked hammers, two-bladed swords and dwarven urgroshes do not exist. ...see above twice.
No class-based alignment or multiclassing restrictions. ...Neutral evil paladin here I come! Which is fine, as long as that's what you really meant. But when I show up with an evil paladin, I'm going to be thinking "He's gonna tell me to make a new character" until you prove me wrong.
Rogues do not have the trapfinding special ability. Any character with at least 1 rank in Disable Device and Search may attempt to find and disable any trap. Like it.
All skills are class skills for all classes. Are you drunk?
Characters begin with 9 wealth points: see Wealth Points for details. You mean you're giving us homework for the WEEKEND too?
No Experience Points: That's not so bad actually. My DM fudges XP sometimes, because it can be annoying to try to figure out what XP is awarded for what detail, who's above what level for what reason, ect... the DM tries to keep us pegged in the same area.
But item creations, XP costs or boosts, and things like that, need to be acknowledged. My group knows how our XP fudging works, and why we do it. But if I were an outside player looking at these rules, I'd be asking myself way too many "What about this..." type questions, the answers which aren't even mentioned.

*********************************

I'm not trying to sound snarky or mean here. If you like those rules, then fine, but if someone came up to me and said "I wanna DM a game" I'd say sure. If they dropped this pamphlet in front of me and said these were new rules, I'd say "nevermind".

[Tequila Sunrise]

Wow! I had assumed that my house rules were the reason that my game got voted down, but it's quiet a shock to hear exactly what people don't like about them. For example, I didn't think that anyone would prefer standard iterative attacks over my simplified version. Well, you live and then you learn...slowly. I've run HR-free games before and they either felt crazy or just stifling, so I just can't bring myself to do so again.

So in case I DM a 3e game before 4e comes out, I just went through my rules and added in explanations for them, made a couple of them optional (ala A Handful of Dice and Simple Iterative Attacks), edited a few mistakes (the card stat-gen method should involve two 9s also, so max is 18 rather than 16) and made a note that I don't expect players to know all my house rules.

[SoD]

I'm all for some of these house rules, I might actually adopt the death at -con score.
Barbarians are literate automatically. OK, but I've always liked role-playing that.
Druids+scimirate=:frown: That I agree with.


There are some I question (at least, until I know the reasoning): all classes are the favoured class? Because everyone knows that half-orcs are as good a wizard as they are a barbarian.
No dwarven ungroshes, orc double axes, or gnome hooked hammer? You deleted the racial weaponry?
Age bonuses don't apply? So...an elven fighter can be just as strong at 1000 as he was at 110?
I've always prefured rolling for stats, instead of point buy, but I'm not to sure about dealing for stats...
Why are little people better at listening? And searching? And seeing things?
All skills are in class...why?! That's the one that I think needs the most explaining. And, I doubt people will accept it. What good would the factotom be? And you've gotten rid of the rogues trapfinding abilities and given it to everyone...now you've gotten rid of the in class skills as well?

Whoops, pirated by the original poster!

Re-read the house rules, I still don't know why you don't like the racial weaponry. I think that the fact that the different races exist could be enough of an excuse, traditional weaponry. It might not be used often, and could usually be for ceromonial purposes, similar to the sword used for knighting people, but I would still have them there. Stuff like the two-bladed sword looks cool, and can seem impressive, spiked chains...yeah, I get the point here.

[Tequila Sunrise]

Lots of the others are pretty much low-luck mods, designed to take the element of risk (crit hits and failures) out of the game. Unfortunately, games that are too safe and static are also lacking in player appeal. Nobody wants to be average.

This is the only thing I don't follow. How do my rules take risk out of the game? I haven't done anything with crits or auto fails.

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff of Moddingham: Moved from Homebrew. Carry on. :smallsmile:

[Bryn]

Well, looking at your houserules, I don't find them as bad as everyone else says :smallconfused:. The 'all skills are class skills' is one I'm personally in favour of, and I did indeed use it in my last game - skillmonkeys still have the advantage of a lot more skill points than everyone else, and I think I can trust my players not to abuse Use Magic Device or Diplomacy.

For those interested (ie, absolutely nobody :smallamused:), here's the houserule list from my current PbP Eberron game:


Allowed Material: All of it. If it's DnD 3.5, it can be used. If necessary, you'll need to send me the details.
Naturally, that's ever-so-slightly abuseable, but I trust you to build fair and balanced characters: if you wouldn't allow it in one of your games, then you probably shouldn't use it here :smallwink:. Look at what everyone else is building and make something comparable in usefulness.
I prefer it if you don't use alternative magic systems such as Tome of Magic or Incarnum (Psionics and Tome of Battle are fine). You may use such systems, but I don't have the rules for these so I'd rather you didn't.
I would like it you told me what you're going to play before you go and build it, however. That way, I can decide if I want to tweak it, or tell you if I think it's significantly more or less powerful/useful than the rest of the group.

Houserules
I'm throwing out a lot of things, here...

Alignment is completely removed. A character can, of course, have morals, but they are not codified as a universally-defined alignment. This leads to the following changes:

Detect [alignment] spells no longer exist.
Protection from [alignment] spells are combined into one Protection spell which applies to any creature.
The Paladin's Smite Evil class feature (and the other Smite class features of Unearthed Arcana's variant Paladins) can be used against any creatures.
Alignment requirements for classes are, of course, no longer in effect.
Other alignment-based mechanics generally apply to everyone
Multiclassing loses all restrictions. You are encouraged to take any combination of classes you wish to best mechanically represent your character. The changes include the following:

There is no experience point penalty as a result of multiclassing.
Classes which place restrictions on multiclassing lose these restrictions: for example, you can continue to take levels in Paladin after taking levels in another class.
Any other restrictions on multiclassing are also removed.
Classes need not follow the background that's written for them: a barbarian could be a warrior of the wilderness prone to flying into massive rages, or he could be an experimental warforged which has special enchantments to boost the magical energy empowering it for a short time. You should have some way to explain the mechanical abilities, but apart from that anything goes.
All skills are treated as class skills for every class. If you want a fighter able to play the piano, you are perfectly free to spend the ranks any way you like.
Every player character gets either a Skill Focus feat or one of the various feats that grant +2 to two skills as a bonus feat.
The feats Two Weapon Fighting, Improved Two Weapon Fighting and Greater Two Weapon Fighting are all combined as one feat:

Two-Weapon Fighting [General]
You can fight with a weapon in each hand. You can make one or more extra attacks each round with the second weapon, depending on your BaB.
Prerequisite
Dex 15.
Benefit
Your penalties on attack rolls for fighting with two weapons are reduced. The penalty for your primary hand lessens by 2 and the one for your off hand lessens by 6. See the Two-Weapon Fighting special attack.
If your base attack bonus is 6 or more and your Dexterity is 17 or more, you get a second attack with the off-hand weapon at a -5 penalty.
If your base attack bonus is 11 or more, you get a third attack with the off-hand weapon at a -10 penalty (from the first off-hand attack).
Normal
If you wield a second weapon in your off hand, you can get one extra attack per round with that weapon. When fighting in this way you suffer a -6 penalty with your regular attack or attacks with your primary hand and a -10 penalty to the attack with your off hand. If your off-hand weapon is light the penalties are reduced by 2 each. (An unarmed strike is always considered light.)
Special
A 2nd-level ranger who has chosen the two-weapon combat style is treated as having Two-Weapon Fighting, even if he does not have the prerequisite for it, but only when he is wearing light or no armour. For his other feats, he may choose any feat that has Two-Weapon Fighting as a prerequisite.
Feats that have Improved or Greater Two-Weapon Fighting replace them with the BaB and Dexterity requirements for the appropriate number of iterative attacks as per this feat.
A fighter may select Two-Weapon Fighting as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Character Creation
Abilities can be generated either by a 32-point buy, or by rolling 4d6 and taking the best three seven times before dropping the lowest ability score, then arranging as you wish. These rolls can be made with the board software or linked to on a site such as Invisible Castle. If you roll badly, you may choose to point-buy instead.
Backstory encouraged but not mandatory. If necessary, I will help you incorporate Eberron elements into your backstory, as not all are familiar with the setting.

Even if you don't have a backstory, I'd like a reason for you character to be on the expedition to Xen'drik.
A long backstory is not required. Make sure it is long enough to cover everything important, but also short enough to be interesting to read.
Character Wealth is standard for an 8th-level character, ie 27000gp.


I remove a lot of restrictions with house rules, because I assume that players are decent people who won't abuse the changes :smallwink:

[DracoDei]

Without having read all your rules, and only having skimmed the ones I have read, these are my comments off the top of my head...

"Still learning" is different from "you are an idiot". I DO NOT know how people meant it when they said your house rules sucked, but I WOULD NOT take it too harshly. Also, don't assume the reasoning behind the descision the players actually made... I suggest asking them... politely, and "so I can improve".

I like your rules about multi-classing and used the same (or similar) myself. By which I mean getting the +2 bonus only once and having the biggest HD be maximized and getting quadrupal skills for the most skilled class you have. Nobody in my group complained...

I have done leveling without keeping track of XPs before... but it wasn't EXACTLY the storyline that drove it... it was when the player had EARNED it and it had been long enough since the last time they leveled. Nobody objected.

I agree that making all skills class sounds like a bad idea. Even if you just reserved knowledge skills, spellcraft, UMD, and maybe a few others as still being specific to certain classes it would make a world of difference. Or maybe it COULD work... but I would be careful in testing it out... maybe give the skillmonkey classes even more skill points to balance it out?

I agree that racial weapons sound like a good way to add flavor... and increase the fantasy "feel" of the game... now if you are going for a more realistic skill that is exactly what you DON'T want, but for MOST games having some weapons that would never work very well in real life improves it.

[Kantolin]

I actually really like the majority of your house rules. For example, the half orcs => Orcs thing is one I've done quite a few times.

Some of them seem extranneous, but those don't bother me particularly either. I can deal with 'enemy barbarians I meet will not automatically be illiterate' and then move on. The rules in general seem to be for flavor and/or to speed up gameplay, and that's cool with me. So hey.

Speaking of skills, the only skill I can see being particularly powerful is use magic device - I usually open up all skills for everyone as in-class with the exception of UMD, and it works just nicely. If the fighter would like to spellcraft, and the cleric can tie knots... no big deal.

One thing you may want to watch out for, however, are prestige classes. Just be aware that certain prestige classes were created with the mentality that you can't get into them too early due to both skills and a BAB requirement. This may or may not be a problem, depending on the prestige class, but hey - simply stating, "You cannot take this particular prestige class until..." or sommat fixes that immediately.

[Egill]

All skills are class skills for all classes. Are you drunk?


What is your beef with this? Just out of curiosity.

Edit: I could see how Use Magic Device could get out of hand, but that seems about all.

[StickMan]

If I was one of your players my first issue would be the whole blue on plain white page. Its not fun to read.

Beyond that the whole stat gen thing is just confusing. Why would you nerf the monk why I want to know and expect an answer. The bonuses to small races are illogical at best.

I don't mind much else except this:
"There is simply no plausible explanation for some mundane items to exist. Orc double axes, spiked chains, dire flails, gnome hooked hammers, two-bladed swords, dwarven urgroshes and Indiana Jones type traps do not exist."
Ok well I get the Spiked chain, and dire flail for sure, I don't get the double weapon hate specially the Dwarven urgroshes and Gnome hammer.

[bugsysservant]

What is your beef with this? Just out of curiosity.

Edit: I could see how Use Magic Device could get out of hand, but that seems about all.

Diplomacy, Use Psionic Device, and prestige class availability are the major mechanical ones, I believe. Also granting traditional rogue skills to everyone in addition to trapfinding somewhat weakens the class.

A lot of people object to the flavor as well. Really, what logical grounds are there for a barbarian, who grew up in the wilderness, to know more about magic than the wizard who studied for decades?

Edit: As for house rules, I don't know any one who doesn't use them. There are the very common ones (no death from massive damage, no XP penalties) and other frequent ones (various caster nerfs, diplomacy fixes, or others) but yours are just kind of weird, and seem to be there for the sake of making a new rule. Like the stat generation: the DMG has options for point buy, various dice rollings, and the arrays. What is the logic behind making it dependent upon cards?

[Abjurer]

I don't think you should start off a campaign by saying "here, these are my houserules". I think you should build a set of houserules as the need for them arises, and make sure you have the consent of all or at least most of the players.

And some of those rules seem not only unneccesary, but counter-intuitive. Does it not make sense that a character should be able to roll the dice to dodge out of the way of a fireball or fight the effects of poison? Every character wants to feel as though they have done something to be proud of, or at the very least that they can have some control of their own character.

[Matthew]

Diplomacy, Use Psionic Device, and prestige class availability are the major mechanical ones, I believe. Also granting traditional rogue skills to everyone in addition to trapfinding somewhat weakens the class.

A lot of people object to the flavor as well. Really, what logical grounds are there for a barbarian, who grew up in the wilderness, to know more about magic than the wizard who studied for decades?

How about any logical explanation that a Player can come up with? I mean, 3e is supposed to be all about 'options', so why not allow a Fighter to max out Spell Craft if he wants to? I think it's silly not to allow him to if he has a sensible explanation for it. It's not exactly going to be much use to him anyway. Use Magic Device is just about the only one I can see even verging on problematic.

[bugsysservant]

How about any logical explanation that a Player can come up with? I mean, 3e is supposed to be all about 'options', so why not allow a Fighter to max out Spell Craft if he wants to? I think it's silly not to allow him to if he has a sensible explanation for it. It's not exactly going to be much use to him anyway. Use Magic Device is just about the only one I can see even verging on problematic.

I don't object to it, usually, but he asked why, and that is one argument. And honestly, there should be certain skills which are mastered by certain classes. No one should know more about nature than a druid, nor perform better than a bard. A lack of mechanical benefits serves to enforce this policy to some degree, but it isn't hard to see the rationale behind limiting class skills.

That's why I really like the earlier suggestion that cross class skills take only one point but have their usual limits. This encourages flexibility and customization without making players pay for flavor.

[Innis Cabal]

its not that making all class skills avaliable for everyone that bothers me to be completly honest with you. Its the fact that he nerfed the rogue and the monk, while taking out a flavorful and actually realistic bit from the barbarian.

Taking out the d12.....i guess thats fine, its not used for much and wony be missed by any

but to take away a vital part of the monk...and making the rogue a second rung person since one of his class skils is to disarm traps...bad form honestly

alot of the other rules seem pointless or overly complex for no reason, as others have said before. Rolling dice is D&D...why average things? As a begginging player i would look at you like you were insane, and as a veteran player i can only look at your rules and wonder what has led you to some of the more inane and trival bits.

but if people want me to be a carebear and not be honest
it needs work....

[Blanks]

As someone said its just overwhelming. House rules are often a) Minor changes or b) major but few.

You have a huge number of massively changing houserules - we get scared :)

I thought about removing XP but ALL my players objected so i duly award xp. The optional rules about dice and so on is fine, i would never use it, as someone said, the fun thing about fireball is you get to roll a lot of dice :D

Here are some houserules that i usually explains on the fly:
Dry rations last 6 months, you can buy "wet rations"/standard rations at half price, they last 7 days.

1 week=7 days in all worlds and settings

arcane spell failure is 100% in armor

Diplomacy is just changed... somehow... DM fiat until i get something good but i like thealexandrian's thinking, its just not perfect yet :)

erm.. there are more but i can't remember until they become important...

The one rule I explain beforehand is:
I check your char sheet beforehand. No cheese or anything illogical gets allowed. (no spiked chains, no grapplers and the list goes on). I will allow almost anything as long as it doesnt break flavor or is overpowered (players homebrewing feats is fine, i just get to okay it :) )




How about this approach(sp? im tired):
Present all houserules. Pick 3 that you insist on (no spiked chain!!!) and the players vote about the rest wether they want them. Problem solved?

[Matthew]

I don't object to it, usually, but he asked why, and that is one argument. And honestly, there should be certain skills which are mastered by certain classes. No one should know more about nature than a druid, nor perform better than a bard. A lack of mechanical benefits serves to enforce this policy to some degree, but it isn't hard to see the rationale behind limiting class skills.

It goes both ways, though. It's all preferential, there's no iron clad reason to limit or not limit Class Skills beyond that. Honestly, though, why shouldn't somebody know more about nature than a Druid or perform better than a Bard? They already can under the standard rules.


That's why I really like the earlier suggestion that cross class skills take only one point but have their usual limits. This encourages flexibility and customization without making players pay for flavor.

It's helpful, but there's still not much reason to take Skills you cannot max out. That's one of the problems with limited Skill Points/Character Building Resources. Player's will seek to maximise how they use them.

[Swordguy]

Wow! I had assumed that my house rules were the reason that my game got voted down, but it's quiet a shock to hear exactly what people don't like about them. For example, I didn't think that anyone would prefer standard iterative attacks over my simplified version. Well, you live and then you learn...slowly. I've run HR-free games before and they either felt crazy or just stifling, so I just can't bring myself to do so again.

So in case I DM a 3e game before 4e comes out, I just went through my rules and added in explanations for them, made a couple of them optional (ala A Handful of Dice and Simple Iterative Attacks), edited a few mistakes (the card stat-gen method should involve two 9s also, so max is 18 rather than 16) and made a note that I don't expect players to know all my house rules.

Dude, I'd run with these rules. Anything that reduces player power is fine with me - it makes for more exciting games (I'm an opponent of the school of DMing thought that says "just throw bigger and bigger critters at them until you figure out what's a good challenge").

To be fair, the Blue-on-white text sucks.

As for the validity of House Rules in general: you've done all you can. You've said, "Here's the game I'm running, here's all of the house rules for it up front so you can judge for yourself. Do you wanna play in my game world or not?" That's all you can do. If they don't want to, that's their call, but you've been up-front and honest about it. You didn't introduce these eight sessions in (which a lot of people do).

Thing I don't like or don't think work as written are:
-No XP (you run into a lot of system problems with this - things require XP...)
-Followup rules stemming from the "No XP" rule can go away too.
-Attacker always Rolls (again, it's a lot of work for conversion)
-Elves not noticing secret doors: In the past, it was fluffed as an extra bonus of their super-keen senses, not because of familiarity with secret door in general.
-Monk Wisdom-derived AC bonus: Monks need all the hep they can get...don't screw them here too. :smallbiggrin:
-Wealth Points: I want to like this. I really do. I'm a huge fan of the similar systems found in Stargate/Spycraft and such. What you REALLY need is an approximate GP/WP conversion chart, so you can price things like wonderous items or potions (which ought to be bought in lots of 5-6 for 1 WP).
-I'd go the Rolemaster route and give players the option to roll or use your system for things like stats and hit points. They can take the safe route, or go more risky.
-Simple Iterative Attacks: Nice thought. Messy execution. Honestly, I'd drop Iterative Attacks completely and go look at Star Wars:Saga's system. For once, WotC got something completely right.

I'll point out, though, that most of these are nitpicks or differences in play style between you and me. I'd generally be happy to use these (and, I point out, the things I don't like are a very small proportion to the number of House Rules you actually have). My games have a similarly-sized list of House Rules. The nice thing about being the only person around who's willing to actually do the work to GM is that you can dictate the terms. "If you wanna play a game, we're playing this. Don't like it? Run your own. Oh, wait! You never do." :smallwink:

[bugsysservant]

It goes both ways, though. It's all preferential, there's no iron clad reason to limit or not limit Class Skills beyond that. Honestly, though, why shouldn't somebody know more about nature than a Druid or perform better than a Bard? They already can under the standard rules.

Because that's what the classes are. A bard is someone who can sing or play music well. He has abilities which allow this to be a mechanically feasible character, but that is what a bard should be. Likewise someone who knows deeply about nature is a druid. They have abilities based upon this, but that is more the mechanics that support the class.

Ultimately, I find it kind of silly to say "I can out-Perform a bard, but I'm really a fighter". Yes, the barbarian who taught himself flute to occupy his time in the lonely northern tundra shouldn't be penalized for a cross class skill, but he shouldn't be as talented as the bard who has made music the focus of his entire life.

[Inyssius Tor]

I just went through my rules and added in explanations for them, made a couple of them optional ... and made a note that I don't expect players to know all my house rules.

The explanations, while interesting and helpful, make the pamphlet even longer, adding to players' anxiety. ("I'm supposed to read all this?")

Making some of them optional in some cases is a good idea, in theory, but it will also make players anxious. They need to read through everything very carefully, in case there's some hidden rule that isn't so optional. They'll feel like they're wasting time all the while, since they're cramming for a rule that they don't plan to ever use.

Telling them that they don't need to know all of your house-rules is, again, a good idea in theory. But, both in your post and in the document, it plants a seed of doubt. "Okay, I don't need to know all of these rules, but which ones am I expected to know?"

EDIT: Not to be negative or an ass or anything--I probably sound like one or the other (or both). I'm trying to be constructive, but--well, I'm not doing much constructing, am I? Here's a smiley, provided in the hope that it will change the tone of my post:

:smile:

[tyckspoon]

It's helpful, but there's still not much reason to take Skills you cannot max out. That's one of the problems with limited Skill Points/Character Building Resources. Player's will seek to maximise how they use them.

Tumble, Heal, Climb, Listen, Spot, Hide, Move Silently, Survival.. there are a fair number of skills that are useful without investing max ranks in them. Paying double for them is what keeps me, at least, from looking at taking them.


Multiclassed characters gain the best benefits out of all their 1st class levels. For example a Fighter/Rogue has a maximized d10 hit die and quadrupled skill points equal to 8 + Int. Multiclassed characters use fractional attack bonuses and saves. A character can gain the +2 good save bonus only once per save type.

I'm kind of confused by this. Are you allowing characters to have multiple classes at level 1? If so, you're running gestalt, where 'take the best of each class' is the standard rule anyway. If not, this is either wildly abusable or I'm confused as to how exactly you apply it. Did you have another rule somewhere that prevents characters from being Rogue1/Ranger1/Bard1 and getting (8x4) + (6x4) + (6x4) = minimum 80 skill points? (which would be really nice, courtesy of the all skills are class skills change.)

[Tequila Sunrise]

Well I added explanations for a lot of my HRs, which is probably why the more recent responses have been carebear-ish. Just for the sake of discussion (not argument), I'll highlight some of my thinking behind my HRs.

All Skills are Class Skills: A nomadic tribesman probably doesn't have much business learning Spell Craft, but then again the skill is not just for wizards. Maybe my barbarian character was mentored by a priest and learned a bit about spells from him. Or maybe my "barbarian" character is a city street brawler who was hired on to bodyguard for a local wizard and learned to recognize magic during his employment. There are a zillion reasons for any given character to focus on any given skill. Sure, I could allow unusual class skills on a case by case basis but it's just easier to make a blanket rule. On the Use Magic Device issue, I don't think it'll break the game for the fighter to max the skill out--he still has to buy or find the items to use the skill on. Personally I've considered banning UMD in the past, not because of its power, but just because...wtf? How exactly do you trick an inanimate object into believing that you're an elf instead of a human? I'd like spell-trigger items as a simple yes/no situation, rather than make a skill check against a flat DC. But I've never banned it because I really try not to ban core stuff.

On "Nerfing the monk and rogue": Removing trapfinding doesn't nerf anyone, it just means that one character has to "take one for the team" and take 1 level of rogue just to be able to overcome a basic dungeon challenge. The limit on a monk's AC bonus isn't much of a nerf, none at all past 4th level, it's just so that the druid doesn't decide "hey I'll take a level dip in monk to get an easy +4 AC." Just like the limit on the paladin's smite evil.

More later--gainful employment calls.

[Matthew]

Because that's what the classes are. A bard is someone who can sing or play music well. He has abilities which allow this to be a mechanically feasible character, but that is what a bard should be. Likewise someone who knows deeply about nature is a druid. They have abilities based upon this, but that is more the mechanics that support the class.

Ultimately, I find it kind of silly to say "I can out-Perform a bard, but I'm really a fighter". Yes, the barbarian who taught himself flute to occupy his time in the lonely northern tundra shouldn't be penalized for a cross class skill, but he shouldn't be as talented as the bard who has made music the focus of his entire life.

Fact is, though, that they already can. It's completely by the book for the DM to tweak the Skills of a Fighter to include something like Perform (Lute), should the player have a good reason. Not to mention the fact that via Feats and Attribute increases a Level 10 Fighter can make a Level 1 Bard look pathetic by comparison.

What you may desire from fixed Classes seems to me to already be unsupported by the mechanics. It appears very arbitrary to me to say it's okay for a Level 10 Fighter to be better at the Flute than a Level 1 Bard, but not a Level 1 Fighter.


Tumble, Heal, Climb, Listen, Spot, Hide, Move Silently, Survival.. there are a fair number of skills that are useful without investing max ranks in them. Paying double for them is what keeps me, at least, from looking at taking them.

Of course it is, which is rather the point. Since it costs you double to purchase the ranks and you cannot max them out, you're less inclined to use your character building resources; that's exactly what I am saying. A Level 7 Fighter with 10 Ranks of Move Silently isn't going to break the game.

[Rachel Lorelei]

Tequila: having a big long list of house rules is turn-off for players. Not only does it give them extra work to do, but it threatens their understanding of the game for what most players will feel is no good reason--for example, the iterative attacks. (And such rules do have influence beyond what you might first think; Power Attack becomes even better with your iterative attack rules.)

And on top of that, your house rules don't even address the big problems people see with D&D (which is the kind of thing house rules are for). Plus, enforcing whims like "no d12!" gives the appearance of an over-controlling DM.

[Rachel Lorelei]

All Skills are Class Skills: A nomadic tribesman probably doesn't have much business learning Spell Craft, but then again the skill is not just for wizards. Maybe my barbarian character was mentored by a priest and learned a bit about spells from him. Or maybe my "barbarian" character is a city street brawler who was hired on to bodyguard for a local wizard and learned to recognize magic during his employment. There are a zillion reasons for any given character to focus on any given skill. Sure, I could allow unusual class skills on a case by case basis but it's just easier to make a blanket rule. On the Use Magic Device issue, I don't think it'll break the game for the fighter to max the skill out--he still has to buy or find the items to use the skill on. Personally I've considered banning UMD in the past, not because of its power, but just because...wtf? How exactly do you trick an inanimate object into believing that you're an elf instead of a human? I'd like spell-trigger items as a simple yes/no situation, rather than make a skill check against a flat DC. But I've never banned it because I really try not to ban core stuff.
Skills can have powerful in-game effects, from Use Magic Device to Diplomacy to Spot/Listen to Hide/Move Silently. At least hypothetically, access to various skills is part of class balance. This messes with that and it doesn't do anything to compensate; it also risks characters with 2 or 4+INT skills and high Intelligence taking over the skill-monkey's role.


On "Nerfing the monk and rogue": Removing trapfinding doesn't nerf anyone, it just means that one character has to "take one for the team" and take 1 level of rogue just to be able to overcome a basic dungeon challenge. The limit on a monk's AC bonus isn't much of a nerf, none at all past 4th level, it's just so that the druid doesn't decide "hey I'll take a level dip in monk to get an easy +4 AC." Just like the limit on the paladin's smite evil.

More later--gainful employment calls.
I agree with the "anyone can find traps" rule; D&D trap mechanics are crap. However, the limit on the monk's AC bonus IS a nerf, potentially, until the mid-levels: low-level monks desperately NEED that AC bonus. They already suck--making them even worse at low levels is a killer.
And with the existence of the Monk's Belt, actual monk dips are not something to worry about. What's more, a druid taking a monk level is giving up a level of Wild Shape, animal companion, and SPELLCASTING advancement. And on top of that, consider that Wild armor and an Animated shield will give more AC than the Wisdom bonus 9 out of 10 times.
This house rule does nobody any good.

[Zincorium]

Tequila, there are two major problems I see with the situation you have.

1. Your house rules don't go very far in improving the playability of the game. If everyone has to just stop every time they buy something to figure out how your system works, then you're hurting the game. In a cost/benefit analysis, where the cost is the amount of time detracted from roleplaying and getting things accomplished in-game, and the benefit is how much the game is improved, we're looking at an overall loss here.

2. The players haven't had a chance to see the rules in action, and many of them, like the no-xp thing, can BREAK a game if not done well. As well, you've got an outright contradiction: you described your game as 'rules-light' and then added more rules.

[Innis Cabal]

you want to avoid level dips an min/maxing but you took away the favored class and XP penelties for multi-classing.....color me confused

[Matthew]

Skills can have powerful in-game effects, from Use Magic Device to Diplomacy to Spot/Listen to Hide/Move Silently. At least hypothetically, access to various skills is part of class balance. This messes with that and it doesn't do anything to compensate; it also risks characters with 2 or 4+INT skills and high Intelligence taking over the skill-monkey's role.

...or it creates a greater flexibility for character creation and development. It's unlikely that a Character with few Skill Points will manage to oust a Rogue from his position, given that all else is equal.

[bugsysservant]

Fact is, though, that they already can. It's completely by the book for the DM to tweak the Skills of a Fighter to include something like Perform (Lute), should the player have a good reason. Not to mention the fact that via Feats and Attribute increases a Level 10 Fighter can make a Level 1 Bard look like pathetic by comparison.

What you may desire from fixed Classes seems to me to already be unsupported by the mechanics. It seems very arbitrary to me to say it's okay for a Level 10 Fighter to be better at the Flute than a Level 1 Bard, but not a Level 1 Fighter.

Well, thats really a problem with the level system as the whole. A rogue can become a better weaponsmith in a few years than a master dwarf who has spent hundreds of years laboring at a forge. How? By killing monsters.

The system is based upon the concept that all attributes can be advanced based upon a single factor (xp). Thus someone can become adept at anything by killing things. One has to accept this or reject D&D as a whole. Comparing a tenth level fighter with a first level bard is thus irrelevant in terms of realism since it defies the basis for the system.

The alternatives are allowing you to take ranks in only class skills or put an arbitrary limit on the number of cross class ranks one can take, regardless of level. And nobody wants that.

[Matthew]

Well, thats really a problem with the level system as the whole.

It's actually a problem with the way the Level system is implemented in 3e with relation to Skill progression and Feats, not the level system as a whole (unless you mean only the 3e one). It's perfectly possible to avoid these problems, the game designers just chose not to. The point is that the mechanics currently do not support the idea that a Fighter can never outplay a Bard or outknowledge a Druid or whatever. Releasing the Cross Class Skill Caps on Skills just makes it slightly less arbitrary.

[Azerian Kelimon]

Up until now, there hasn't been much on the way of improving the rules, but complaining about them, right? So, why not try to fix them?

First off, the card system is CRAP. It's fully random, doesn't allow for all 'round goodness, and is open to minmaxing. If you want sumthin' like that, use the Champion Array (Every Even number from 18 to 8, the same as you suggested but not random), but personally, I prefer a one on one point buy. You pick a number of points for the players (say, 88 for example), and they start with every score at 0. They can assign them as they like, thus giving them ease of use, and giving you the knowledge that one player won't be better than another because they roll high. It helps in making a monk suffer less MADness, for example.

Same with the all skills as class skills thing. CRAP, and there's no fix for that other than giving it the buh-bye!

The XP system is on the bad side. It's actually more work than giving them XP per encounter (Per encounter also means per dialog, per trap, per days of forging something and RP'ing it well...) because you must keep tabs. "So, you killed 3 orcs, 2 tarrasques, and got laid with the succubus princess and survived. Nah, not yet enough for a level up in my opinion". The XP system followed an equation. find the equation, memorize it, and it's the end of oyur troubles.

The scimitar thing is there to give druids a GOOD weapon. Give them something better and remove it, else, keep it.

The new iterative mechanic is rather bad. It screws with Power attack, slashing flurry, rapid blitz and more, and is more complicated. Just remove it and use the normal iteratives.

Death from massive damage was an option last time I checked. This means it's a houserule. Just don't use it and done.

The multiclass thingy is too complicated. Take it out, and just use Dual Class or Multiclass from second edition.

The monk trick is bad, since a monk's role is to survive, or be a whore (That was serious. Rework flurry of blows and you're set.), and this makes them squishy.

The Wild shape change is bad. Just use the PHBII's rule, or remove the shaping part entirely, because else you turn wildshape into crud.

The removal of exotics is only for your campaigns. I play a human warblade who uses an elven thinblade, and I wouldn't remove that, so why remove other weapons?

The rest seems more or less fine.

[Matthew]

Death from massive damage was an option last time I checked. This means it's a houserule. Just don't use it and done.

Go back and check again.

Preferences, preference, preferences... by 'better' we tend to mean 'more like how I prefer it'.

[Azerian Kelimon]

Curse translated PHB's. I've three PHB's (one in Italian, one in Spanish, and the vanilla english one), and the Spanish PHB, which I have handy, lists massive damage as a variant.

[Matthew]

Ooh! I heard the Spanish version has crazy commentries at the bottom of some of the pages, such as "this doesn't make sense, wha?"

My girlfriend has the Japanese 3e PHB, I dread to think what the precision is like in that... :smallwink:

[Egill]

There is an awful lot of ignoring Rule Zero in this thread.

[Matthew]

We always ignore Rule 0 during RAW discussion, but this is actually a discussion of Rule 0, if you see what I mean.

[Azerian Kelimon]

We ARE debating rule 0, basically. This are houserules for DM'ing. We are rule 0'ing the system, man.

[Inyssius Tor]

There is an awful lot of ignoring Rule Zero in this thread.

Oh yes, because the DM has the right to physically force his players to play the way he commands when they inevitably disagree with his arbitrary decrees. That's all covered in Rule Zero, right? --I mean, I don't have my DMG handy, but it sounds about right to me...

PS: I'm not insulting Tequila here. I'm waxing hypothetical, so as to to make a point.

[bugsysservant]

Oh yes, because the DM has the right to physically force his players to play the way he commands when they inevitably disagree with his arbitrary decrees. That's all covered in Rule Zero, right? --I mean, I don't have my DMG handy, but it sounds about right to me...

Damn Straight! Whenever my players disagree with me, I just get out my DM-in' club. No dissent at my table. :smallbiggrin:

[Swordguy]

Oh yes, because the DM has the right to physically force his players to play the way he commands when they inevitably disagree with his arbitrary decrees. That's all covered in Rule Zero, right? --I mean, I don't have my DMG handy, but it sounds about right to me...

PS: I'm not insulting Tequila here. I'm waxing hypothetical, so as to to make a point.

If they want to play in his game, then yes (not physically, perhaps...). As a GM, you run a game you want to run, and it's the responsibility of the players to make characters that conform to that game world - because if not, the GM HAS NO FUN.

If the players want to run in a game where everybody plays dragons with gestalt classes and Pun-pun is a low-level mook compared to their badassery, that's fine. One of them can go run it. Since the hard work in a game is done by me (as the GM), I'm running what I'm going to run, and the players are welcome to participate.

It's a fine line between this and railroading. The difference is that I, as a GM, am providing a setting and a rules framework that I can live with and enjoy, while the players get to make all of the in-character choices about where they go and what they do in that setting.

Want different rules? Go play someone else's game.

[OneWinged4ngel]

Damn Straight! Whenever my players disagree with me, I just get out my DM-in' club. No dissent at my table. :smallbiggrin:

By contrast, I encourage dissent at my table. I tell my players to criticize me as they please, and tell them to let me have it with any complaints, advice, suggestions, ideas, or any other form of feedback that may come to their minds at the end of every session. When I make a new houserule, I present it to the group and ask them to be brutal with any criticisms or potential problems. I take this information into account and try to make a better experience for the players with it.

Usually, though, I just end up with unanimous praise at the end of every session I run anyways. ^^;;

[Jade_Tarem]

To answer: sure

In fact, my group's main two games are those with the most intense house-rulings. To give you an idea of how the campaign worlds are constructed:

My house-ruled up game (war-based):

All monsters are intelligent as per being hit with some kind of mega-Awaken spell and almost all of them are allied against the core PHB races. This is part of the campaign plot. While this would seem to be "good game" for the core races, the simple fact is that there just aren't that many of the more powerful monsters. Also, the core races were prepared (also written into the campaign) and have a number of tactics for dealing with the monster groups, and tend to have a higher technology level due to simply having more practice with innovation and invention.

Dragons are the exception - there are no metallic dragons, or strange dragon variants. The five core chromatic dragon types are mercenary and for-hire to either side of the conflict - and of course, these are very rare, and their help is very expensive.

All animals are awakened as well, with the exception of domesticated and unusable animals. These are part of a third group in the conflict.

All undead are not awakened, and are not allied with the previous groups. Any undead brought into existance immediately side with the existing undead, even if they were merely summoned, and without regards to their creator - making any necromancy-based casters significantly weaker.

Magic caps at fifth-level spells. This has recently been altered through in-game actions to go up to sixth level.

Paladin has been enhanced with SR and a few other interesting abilities. It has been made into a prestige class with campaign-specific requirements, and is no longer a base class.

Several spells have been altered. Several spells have been created.

Two prestige classes have been fabricated.

Death through massive damage (a variant that actually has to be houseruled IN, despite the previous posts on this thread) is in. This is a war game; war games are bloody. Two characters and several monsters have died from massive damage with no complaints from anyone.

Death through triple-crit is in. There's no actual reason for this, but my group likes the feel of "the Death Star shot" so we play using this rule.

Rules for outsiders have been changed - significantly. The group has not been told what they are, as outsiders are just now making an appearance in the world again after a long, long time.

Rules for spells above sixth level have been changed. While this seems contradictory with an earlier rule, the group *can* gain access to higher level spells. The group does not know about this yet (and none of them read this forum! :smalltongue: )

Quite the tall list, isn't it? This other campaign is one that someone else in the group is running, and so I may not know all of the exceptions yet. While it seems cruel of the DM to keep things secret, it's actually an enjoyable aspect of this campaign - the party started in eberron, and ended up in this new realm right at the get-go, so anything differing from the Eberron campaign setting is supposed to be a surprise. Since our group consists mainly of mature players, it works out.

Arcane magic barely works. All arcane spells and abilities are half-strength.

Divine magic works differently, as the pantheon has been replaced with gods that we barely understand.

The world is psionics-heavy.

Air pressure goes up as you go up, and down as you lose elevation.

Elves are misguided, fanatical, genocidal, and warlike. They do NOT coexist with any other race. We started in the human lands, and my elven paladin got a very chilly reception.

The sky is green, and there is a giant hole in it.

Dwarves live on plains, not in mountains.

"Good" and "Evil" have entirely different definitions. My paladin was the first to find this out. Needless to say, hilarity ensued.

In some places, money quite literally falls from the sky. In some of those same places, that is the only way to get money.

The monetary system is different, as most areas have switched to a paper-based economy that, as it turns out, features easily-counterfietable cash. Our rogue almost wet himself with joy. These areas are not the same areas where money falls from the sky.

There is at least one new, campaign-specific monster.

Sounds like a lot, doesn't it? Especially if you actually read through all that. Regardless, these are the two most popular campaigns for my group, so houserules are not inherantly less popular, if you take care. Go forth and rule away!

[Ganurath]

Most of it I just manage on the fly if problems come up, with the exception of Drizzt's Law: Anyone playing anything resembling Drizzt within a majority of similiarity sets* has their character permanently polymorphed into a Dex 3 Goblin.

*Three out of five from this list:
Race (Elf, since there are no drow in my campaign. Evil elves are elves with the evil alignment, not their own species.)
Weapon Selection
Rebellious Background
Personality
Class

[Clementx]

By skimming the rules, most are not bad. Some of them are minor little things that get tossed around, and don't add much, but also don't require much effort to change. Some have potential balance issues, but that is something to get hammered out after sessions and part of an evolving game. More playtesting will fix them.

Some are purely about your conception of the game world. You are the one going through all the effort to create the setting, its your right to make it interesting and appealing to you. I also get rid of massive damage, and pretty much everything that can kill you on a single roll without numerous other factors added in. Wizard players are sad that they can't power word kill, but are very happy there are no bodaks killing them by just looking at them.

As for disclosure, it better be upfront. Would any of you honestly prefer having rules changed under your feet in the middle of combat, because the DM didn't want to "scare you off" with homework? And have you actually looked at the PHB+DMG+MM? Nine hundred pages of homework, right there. Skimming over this list of house rules beforehand (most of the volume being taken up by monster/class/magic progressions that you will only have to check once or never at all depending on your character). My house rule document is about 20 pages long in Wordpad. Half of that are spell fixes/removals. Maybe three pages of combat/gear mods. Four pages of home-brewed feats. The rest are plugging contradictions/loopholes so they never come up at the table. No one has ever expressed dismay at glossing it over to see what changes are applicable to them.

And what the hell is up with this treating the urgosh as a sacred cow? Has anyone who is complaining about the loss of it ever even used it in a game?! No one does, because it is silly, double weapons aren't worth it, and dwarven fighters have better options.

[Tequila Sunrise]

Cards and Stats: My preferred method is point buy, especially when stats are created out of my sight, but the folks who I will be playing with prefer rolling. This was my compromise. It's random but fair enough that I feel comfortable not being able to personally vouch for everyone's stats. The worst someone could do would be to show up with the champion array that was mentioned: 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18. Not a big deal. Honestly if anyone wants to "cheat" with the cards, I'm not going to question them because I had planned on point buy anyway.

Exotic Weaponry: I can see people's argument; this was actually the last HR that I added to the list and I may change it. Racial weapons do add flavor, even if they are wacky but spiked chain I just can't handle. Not necessarily its power but just thinking about it logistically. How exactly do you swing around a heavy friggin' metal chain and strike foes 10' away without hitting/getting tangled in nearby allies and foes?

Monk AC and Paladin Smite: I can see how low level characters don't need this nerf, but I just don't like those 1 level dips. I could change the rule to be a little more wordy: "If a monk or paladin multiclasses, their Wis/Cha bonuses to AC/smite cannot exceed their monk/paladin level" or something a little more professional sounding, but you get the idea. This way a 1st level monk gets the full benefits of her wisdom but a level dipper doesn't.

No XP: The rule that I've used in the past is to simply hand out arbitrary amounts of XP at the end of each session. The No XP rule is just the next step that I thought I'd try out. I could go back, but I figured it was just as simple to fold XP spell components into material components and base item creation on wealth and level.

Attacker always rolls: Swordguy mentioned that this will require a lot of conversions, care to eloborate? Saves and spell DCs will be the one used most often, and that's simple as sin to convert. Abjurer mentioned that this rule is counter-intuitive--but how is save DCs and spell attacks bad while AC and attack rolls are good? Do you roll AC against attack DCs in your game?

Simple Iterative Attacks: I'm still confused as to why people think this is complicated, somebody want to drop a hint? I've thought about using the saga rule instead (1/2 level bonus on damage?), but figured that players wouldn't like it much because it involves less dice. It does fit nicely with my simplicity theme though.

Multiclass Best Benefits: I didn't think this up to boost multiclassers, I actually just did it because when I make multiclass NPCs I don't like worrying about which class level were taken when. PCs get all the benefits that NPCs get. To answer Tyckspoon's question: you only quadruple the skill points from one of your class' first level and only maximize one of your HD.

Wealth Points: The idea is to make equipment easier to deal with. At least for me, because this HR more than any of the others I don't expect anyone else to know. I give the PCs wealth points, they get to a town and tell me what they look for to buy and I tell them if and how much it costs. After a few shopping trips players should get the gyst of the system even if they never read it. I hate tracking thousounds of gp and I hate that PC wealth inflates exponentially while item prices inflate geometrically. For a player that really likes to play the haggler or economist, my wealth points will suck but honestly I'm not interested in playing with someone who just can't deal with the fact that he can't use an excel sheet at the next big town.

Small Race bonuses: They get a bonus to attack and AC but only get a bonus to Hide? Who thought that was a good idea? If you're lighter and smaller your footfalls are softer, your center of gravity is lower, you have less chance of accidentally banging into things, etc... Likewise, larger objects and creatures are proportionally louder, more defined and generally more noticable. Also, wouldn't you rather remember a single bonus for both Hide/MS than one bonus for each roll? Same concept as iterative attacks.

On PrCs: I don't encourage multiclassing but I do encourage converting PrC features into alternate class abilities, feats and base classes. Most PrCs are just plain unnecessary.

Thanks to everyone who's still tuned in!

PS Rachel: What are the Big Problems with D&D that you would want HRs to fix?

PS Azerian: Are you reading my HRs or someone else's?

[Azerian Kelimon]

Yours. Why?

[Overlard]

You say you feel the current rules are too stifling, but you're adding layers onto that that just seem to make the problem worse. Skill monkeys, clerics, druids, rangers and even monks are worse-off under these rules. And I don't know anyone who has problems with rolling handfuls of d6s for spell damage (that's normally why they play an arcane caster) or the current iterative attack system.

Honestly, if I was going to join a new game, and was handed a list of house rules like that, I wouldn't bother playing. You're trying to fix problems that most people don't think exist, and causing collateral damage along the way.

[Triaxx]

Considering my initial thoughts on the matter involved casting 'Beat with DMG' on you, I've calmed down. I wrote a long, involved post detailing the problems with each rule.

My computer promptly dropped my connection and lost the post. So I'll put it in short.

Most of these rules are unnecessarily complex. I do like Retroactive skill points. I can live with others, such as literate Barbarians.

Changing the rules of roles requires me to change my formula's which makes it harder to keep a good pace. I can make two rolls, punch numbers into my formula's and have the results back in a few moments. Changing my methods requires changing my formula's then checking my math.

[Renegade Paladin]

My group has so many shared houserules that I'm going to write them all up in a single document and have it bound into a book. No kidding. The thing is, they've all been continually tested and retested in games literally since the advent of 3e; they're not random stuff I made up just for the sake of being different.

[SilverClawShift]

And have you actually looked at the PHB+DMG+MM? Nine hundred pages of homework, right there.

And it's rules that most gamers know most of, because those are the rules-as-written. Rules you don't know yet might still be there, but it's the core things are BASED off of.
If you're inviting in players to your world, it's assumed they'll know the basic rules of the game. If you're leaving one group and joining another, it's assumed you know the basic rules of the game.

It's unfair and nonsensical to compare the core rulebooks to home-rules, because one of them is the set of basic rules of the game and the other isn't.
So yes, a stack of homerules to wade through is more work. It's more work because you don't have to re-read the core rulebooks everytime you join a new game, but a stack of home rules DOES need to be read.

If my options are "hey guys, let's play D&D" or "Hey guys, let's play D&D after you read through 20 pages of changes I decided to make to the game and if you don't like it go somewhere else" then frankly, I'm gonna pick "Somewhere Else".


And what the hell is up with this treating the urgosh as a sacred cow? Has anyone who is complaining about the loss of it ever even used it in a game?! No one does, because it is silly, double weapons aren't worth it, and dwarven fighters have better options.

Which just gets me back to the question I kept asking myself going through the rules. "Why?"
Why?

Seriously, why bother? If you barely use the weapons, why bother taking the time to specifically mention that you're cutting them? Why not just ignore the thing and let it continue collecting dust?
Saying you're not allowing the weapon, for one, makes me think of the weapon and maybe randomly come up with a character who'd have a reason to want to use it (instead of forgetting it exists quietly), and secondly adds to the list of rules I need to know before joining this world.
Again. "Why?"

Cause you want to. Fine, but if we're playing chess, and you make it a rule that you have to balance taken peices on your head until the next move or the peice gets put back on the board, I'm probably going to politely excuse myself and go play a video game instead.



If the players want to run in a game where everybody plays dragons with gestalt classes and Pun-pun is a low-level mook compared to their badassery, that's fine. One of them can go run it. Since the hard work in a game is done by me (as the GM), I'm running what I'm going to run, and the players are welcome to participate.

So if a player wonders why all skills are class skills, they might as well be a gestalt dragon with a feat for every level? :smallconfused:


Want different rules? Go play someone else's game.

I'm under the impression that that's the very point of this thread. Considering the creator asked wether people are inclined to join games when faced with such a circumstance.

The general response seems to be "Allright, seeya".

***********************************

Also, cause it's 9 seperate kinds of relevant, "How to Create House-Rules" (http://www.basicinstructions.net/2007/11/how-to-create-house-rules.html)

************************************

And again, Tequila Sunrise, I'm not bashing on you here. You've got in your head what makes sense to you, and that's fine. But like I said, if I were left between a game of D&D, and a game of D&D with a list of rules that i didn't feel added much other than being new rules, I'd go with the former.
I'm not saying my group doesn't use houserules, but we tend to agree on stuff so we can play the game together, and when we (recently) adopted a new player, we let him know ahead of times that we played lax with the rules and tended to focus more on flow of storytelling than anything else.

[JaxGaret]

Everyone uses house rules, whether they think they do or not.

Here are my specific critiques of your house rule list, TS:

1) Too long/too many. The more house rules you have, the more likely it is that any individual player will have a problem with one of them. That's just probability.

2)"Multiclassed characters gain the best benefits out of all their 1st class levels. For example a Fighter/Rogue has a maximized d10 hit die and quadrupled skill points equal to 8 + Int. Multiclassed characters use fractional attack bonuses and saves. A character can gain the +2 good save bonus only once per save type."

This benefits multiclassed characters, and many players actively dislike multiclassing or people who multiclass. I'm not one of them, but they exist. In droves, unfortunately.

3) Did you really use "there just aren't enough orc-human rapings" as the reasoning behind getting rid of half-orcs as a playable base race? That alone is such an odd thing to put in your house rules. You might think about editing that out.

[graymachine]

Something I don't think you've considered here is that the rules to the game are a contract between the players and the DM. They define the field of play and how things work, so that everyone involved understands what is going on and how to work with it to develop the story. Fudging the rules here and there is very different than making house rules; letting the rogue make hide and move silently checks with an independent witness to the die rolls and putting it all on a note while you are dealing with the fighter struggling manfully with something is a good thing. But house rules can break this contract you have coming into the game without some extremely careful consideration.

To offer another way of looking at it, I'm sure that most of the people that have read your house rules so far (myself included) have comes up with fairly simple ways of breaking your game wide open and having their hypothetical character functionally achieve godhood. Assuming that someone does this and you don't see it coming, then they are going to be pissed off when you tell them they can't do X for no good reason. And, frankly, they will have every right to be angry; they went into the game (accepted the contract) believing that these house rules were carefully constructed.

Most people that have gamed for a long time have dealt with, at some point, heavy house ruling and have learned that it usually ends badly. This is why you have people hesitant to these rules. I would heavily trim down these rules before even suggesting them to a prospective group; things like not dying until you reach the negative of your CON are ok, but your going to need to look for people that are inclined to the massive rules overhaul you have here.

[codexgigas]

The list of houserules isn't bad, necessarily, it's just long. I think the point where I began feeling overwhelmed was when I started checking out the links to the additional pages of tables. I don't think I'd have a problem with them in an established group, but it really sounds like you're just getting a group together. There isn't a whole lot of player-DM trust at that point, and you're dumping quite a bit of new information on the players.

All of the fluff changes are fine. It's your world, you can decide what weapons, races, etc exist. I like the idea of the attacker always rolling. It's what Saga Edition of Star Wars does, and it looks like 4E will do that too.

I'm not sure I feel about your hit point tables. The fact that hit points exist on a table seems complicated. The iterative attack rule is not simpler than iterative attacks as written, and it weakens iterative attacks. It seems that the small races get quite a bit of bonuses at the cost of weapon damage. Adding a bonus to Move Silently makes sense, but that's as far as I'd go. The Monk gets the shaft, as do the divine casters, to a lesser extent. Then again, the cleric and druid won't be hurt by a downgrade in power, as long as wizards and sorcerers get one as well.

Where I really disagree is with the "all skills are class skills" idea. Sure, skill monkeys still have more skills than anyone else, but it hurts game balance. I'm all for a one-for-one cost for all skills, since it's simpler, and you don't have to deal with half ranks, but I'd maintain cross-classing caps. Why? Because the rogue's skill list is the strongest asset the class has. When you cut into that, there's less of a reason to play a rogue (although I agree that no one should be forced to play/dip a rogue). I'm not sure if this or the stat-gen is my least favorite of your house rules.

I also don't like wealth points. How do wands, scrolls, and potions fit in? It seems like more work for me as a player. I'm fine with limited access to goods, but I like my tangible amount of wealth (although I could deal with an abstract economy, as in Mutants and Masterminds or d20 Modern).

The "no-experience points" thing can work, but, as a player, I like to have a time table on which I level up. Per raw, it's thirteen encounters. I've played games without experience points where everyone leveled up every three sessions. They worked well in the low levels, but experience point costs for spells and crafting can make things messy, even if they're simply translated into gold (and how exactly would that work with a wealth point system?).

That said, I think house rules are almost essential for playing D&D. I'm just not sure about your amount, and I honestly dislike a few of them. I'm currently DMing a Dragonlance campaign, and the players and I sat down and talked about house rules before the first session. I had a few I insisted on, but we compromised on the rest. Since everyone else is doing it, I might as well post my current houserules as well.

Experience gain is sped up. (Players can expect to gain enough experience to level every six encounters. If a player misses a session, they only gain half experience.)
No attacks of opportunity. (My players hate them.)
No spell components. (Again, the players hated keeping up with them. Since the only full caster in the party is a cleric of Kiri-Jolith who focuses on buffs and healing, I didn't see this as being very much abused.)
Magic items cost 150% of their DMG value. (It's post-War of Souls Krynn. A good portion of the magic items got leeched earlier in the Fifth Age.)

[Kompera]

Every time I try to run a game with house rules, something goes wrong. [...] It makes me disapointed but the only conclusion I can draw is that my house rules turned everybody off to my game. I love to DM but there are a few things about the game that I just can't accept as-are when I have direct control over them. My house rules are not strange or restrictive by any stretch of the imagination and yet they seem to repulse players at every turn.Your house rules are entirely strange and in some cases unnecessarily restrictive. I would not care to play in your game, because I prefer to play D&D 3.5, and no set of house rules I've yet to come across takes the game further from that goal than yours.

Some of them are merely odd, like your need to eschew the many character attribute systems already in print and devise your own. This tends to make players have to think about what they characters are going to look like. For people without a good grasp of statistical analysis, it can be confusing. For others, maybe they simply like other familiar methods.

Some are contradictory with others. Again, confusing. Huge advantages to multiclassing by granting full "1st level" benefits upon taking a new class at 1st level, countered by EXP penalties for multiclassing (in a system where EXP means nothing) and obscure rules intended to prevent level dipping? Make up your mind, please.

Others are unnecessary, and may give the impression that you are a very controlling person. Your EXP system comes across as: "You only level up when I say so". I've been known to say "You all gain a level" at the end of a story arc. But I still use the EXP system. People like to track their progress.

Your "wealth point" system states that you don't like micromanagement, but again it reads as: "You get the wealth I assign you". The wealth system in D&D is already fairly abstract. No GM I'm aware of insists that all players pay for each drink at the bar or each days rations. But it does provide a known framework for what your character can buy, with a broadly defined base of values assigned to most desirable objects and services. If you don't care for micro-management, further ignore the costs for any small items or maintenance costs. But there's no real good reason to invent a new and possibly confusing system to make record keeping more easy.

A good many of your house rules limit player options and restrict their actions. People like choices. And even if a two-bladed sword is a silly concept to you, and isn't a terribly effective choice for a melee type, some folks just dig the concept. Try allowing people more control over their own character concepts, and they might enjoy having you as a GM better.
If you really can't conceive of a spiked chain being used without entangling people around the user, despite the similar issues any wielder of a reach weapon would face, perhaps just consider removing the reach, or making it take an action like any other reach weapon to switch the area threatened. That's the entire path to any spiked chain cheese, even though the melee types need every weapon in their arsenal to keep up with the casters. But forbidding the weapon because of your own failure of imagination on an object within a fantasy game again seems like a controlling and micromanaging rule to impose: "You can use these weapons, but not those, because I find them silly or improbable". Bah.

People also like to feel that they are in control of their characters destinies, if only through dice rolls. Removing opposed rolls and the "Attacker Always Rolls" house rules remove that control, and reduce the feeling of controlling their own destiny. I completely disagree with "It's just more fun for the attacker to roll than vica(sic) versa". I want to roll my own saving throw, and if I'm grappled or tripped I want to make my opposed rolls.

And finally, a good many of your house rules are simply not following the first rule of game design: The rules don't necessarily have to be logical each taken by themselves, but they have to work together as a whole. Lots of your rules don't work together as a whole with the rest of the rules system, including your skill system, and your changes to small character and Elven racial benefits. Those benefits are balanced by other penalties, such as slower ground speed, etc. Removing them without granting countering bonuses makes those racial choices less desirable for no obvious game balancing reason, and further remove the feeling of freedom in character concept: "Oh, I can be a Halfling, but I lose some of the normal benefits of being a Halfling if I make that choice. But I still have all the normal penalties of being a Halfling. Bummer"


Does this happen to anyone else?Not to me, because my house rules tend to fall into the "This is my campaign setting [description, including campaign setting, character generation method used, and allowed source books, spells, races, classes, alignments, etc]. I'd like you all to make a character which will fit into it. The Minotaurs from the nautical kingdom are not a playable race until 4th level, so if anyone wants to play that race they'll need to retire their current character or use a character death as an opportunity to choose that race." Then I just review each character for approval, and we go. Short, sweet, and to the point, while not making radical changes to how the core of the game is played. Your house rules can't make the same claim, and I can easily see how players who want to play D&D 3.5 might balk at playing in your variant game.

[Tequila Sunrise]

Not trying to be argumentative here, but your post was like a bat to my head. All I could think after reading it was "Huh?"


The XP system is on the bad side. It's actually more work than giving them XP per encounter (Per encounter also means per dialog, per trap, per days of forging something and RP'ing it well...) because you must keep tabs. "So, you killed 3 orcs, 2 tarrasques, and got laid with the succubus princess and survived. Nah, not yet enough for a level up in my opinion". The XP system followed an equation. find the equation, memorize it, and it's the end of oyur troubles.
I'm not seeing how "you'll level up when you defeat the evil Lord Vordy or take him up on his offer to deliver the crown prince" is more complicated than "okay you just killed 13 goblins, and then there was the two ogres and before that the owlbear...[five minutes later]...alright that's 1,794 XP for everyone! You're 1 XP away from next level? Sorry, you'll just have to wait for next month's session."


The scimitar thing is there to give druids a GOOD weapon. Give them something better and remove it, else, keep it.
Scimitars are good weapons? They're not the best, but I'll go along with you just so that I can point out that druids don't need to depend on weapons to win, especially after wildshape. This really is barely a nerf to the druid, and that's not why I did it. I did it because a scimitar has the same metal composition as a long sword, which is banned for druids because according to RAW it violates their code. I just can't accept "my beliefs prevent me from using too much metal...except if it's curvy!"


The new iterative mechanic is rather bad. It screws with Power attack, slashing flurry, rapid blitz and more, and is more complicated. Just remove it and use the normal iteratives.
I'm aware that my iteratives make physical damage better, but I don't mind. If it screws with a couple of non core feats I won't cry either, but I'll take a look at them just to be sure they're not brilliant must-haves. Again, I wish someone would tell me exactly what is more complicated about +14/+14/+14/+14 than +20/+15/+10/+5. Is it because an interesting decision must be made to use the former, while the latter is automatic?


The multiclass thingy is too complicated. Take it out, and just use Dual Class or Multiclass from second edition.
How are my multiclass rules complicated? They're exactly the same as RAW except they don't provide the even-level stacking loophole to a zillion classes.


The monk trick is bad, since a monk's role is to survive, or be a whore (That was serious. Rework flurry of blows and you're set.), and this makes them squishy.
Monks and whores? Is there some Singapore joke I should know about? Anyway, I'll be editing the monk AC/paladin smite rule so that it only penalizes multiclassers.


The Wild shape change is bad. Just use the PHBII's rule, or remove the shaping part entirely, because else you turn wildshape into crud.
This is why I asked if you were reading my HRs or someone else's--I am using the PHBII wild shape variant.

[Ponce]

Look OP, your players don't like your house rules, and the people in this thread don't seem to like them either. Take it as constructive criticism. The critiques on this threat, while helpful, are only so useful. Talk to your players and ask THEM what they would prefer to see in house rules, since their opinions are the ones that matter. Its just that simple, there's no need for any of this, really.

Happy slayings! :smallcool:


I reject your reality and substitute my own!

[tyckspoon]

Scimitars are good weapons? They're not the best, but I'll go along with you just so that I can point out that druids don't need to depend on weapons to win, especially after wildshape. This really is barely a nerf to the druid, and that's not why I did it. I did it because a scimitar has the same metal composition as a long sword, which is banned for druids because according to RAW it violates their code. I just can't accept "my beliefs prevent me from using too much metal...except if it's curvy!"

They're much better than the rest of the Druid's proficiency list, yes. The curvy bit is apparently an artifact of the Olden Times of D&D: Gygax though druids should have access to a real weapon, and the scimitar (and, IIRC, a few other curved swords like the khopesh) was the closest match to the traditional druidic sickle.



How are my multiclass rules complicated? They're exactly the same as RAW except they don't provide the even-level stacking loophole to a zillion classes.

If I understood your response to me correctly, the complication would come in when you take a level in something different from your first class. Recalculating HP wouldn't be too hard, that's just changing which die gets maxed and converting the previous max die to an average. Redoing skill points would be kind of a headache.



Anyway, I'll be editing the monk AC/paladin smite rule so that it only penalizes multiclassers.

I think you're overreacting to those. What do you gain for dipping into monk? Skill with unarmed attacks, Flurry of Blows at the same penalty as normal TWF'ing, Wis to AC, good saves, and either Improved Grapple or Stunning Blow. No BAB, which would be nice for a fighter-type. No spellcasting advancement, which is crucial for a spellcaster type. The one you're worried about limiting is the Wis to AC. Typically, the other classes that will have enough Wis to make that worthwhile are Clerics and Druids. Clerics stereotypically wear armor; they can't benefit from it. Druids are giving up spellcasting and animal companion progression, either one of which would make for a stronger level than getting Wis to AC. Seems a fair trade to me, although I can at least see the worry when you expect your Druid to prioritize Wisdom and possibly cast spells like Owl's Insight.

Paladin Smites, on the other hand.. dipping just for the Smite is a really bad choice. You get to use the ability once per day, for 1 extra point of damage and +Cha mod to damage. In core, the class most likely to have enough Charisma to really benefit and might be in melee to use it is: the Bard. Who can certainly use a combat boost and is delaying his own, more potent class features to take the Paladin dip. I could see capping Divine Grace bonuses, but letting Smite work as normal really shouldn't be hurting anything.

[Vilehelm]

I'd play in that campaign. While I might not agree with each and every houserule it's up to the DM to make them. While playing they can be adapted where nescessary.

While the rules are in some way quite restrictive, I feel that such is often nescessary for the characters to fit the style of the campaign.

As for destroying or maintaining the balance (insofar there -is- a balance) I could care less. The rules are already not balanced and to me (and my players) it's more important to play an interesting character concept and fill that in with class, race and abilities rather than vice versa. And someone who doesn't feel that way or tries to "break the system" is free to leave my table and never return :smallwink:

Personally I am very restrictive on spell lists as well (a practice which shakes some people to the core, funnily enough, as I'm "taking away their freedom of choice!") for all caster classes. Clerics have to petition for spells and while the entire list is available, they have to convince me, as DM, of the nescessity to prepare a certain spell. Makes for interesting roleplay.

Wizards don't get spells per level, they have to get them from NPCs or spellbooks, or through research (which takes a lot of time).

Restrictions can be conductive to balance and roleplaying. And I have a happy gaming group to prove it :smallbiggrin:

[Heliomance]

Scimitars are good weapons? They're not the best, but I'll go along with you just so that I can point out that druids don't need to depend on weapons to win, especially after wildshape. This really is barely a nerf to the druid, and that's not why I did it. I did it because a scimitar has the same metal composition as a long sword, which is banned for druids because according to RAW it violates their code. I just can't accept "my beliefs prevent me from using too much metal...except if it's curvy!"

Umm... Druids aren't allowed to use metal scimitars either. That's what ironwood is for.

[tyckspoon]

Umm... Druids aren't allowed to use metal scimitars either. That's what ironwood is for.

The restriction is specifically on metal armors and shields. The Druid is allowed to use metal scimitars, daggers, and metal-headed shortspears, although it is probably more in the spirit of the class to have those in ironwood as well when that becomes practical.

[Skyserpent]

Umm... Druids aren't allowed to use metal scimitars either. That's what ironwood is for.

to quote the srd


Weapon and Armor Proficiency

Druids are proficient with the following weapons: club, dagger, dart, quarterstaff, scimitar, sickle, shortspear, sling, and spear. They are also proficient with all natural attacks (claw, bite, and so forth) of any form they assume with wild shape.

Druids are proficient with light and medium armor but are prohibited from wearing metal armor; thus, they may wear only padded, leather, or hide armor. (A druid may also wear wooden armor that has been altered by the ironwood spell so that it functions as though it were steel. See the ironwood spell description) Druids are proficient with shields (except tower shields) but must use only wooden ones.

A druid who wears prohibited armor or carries a prohibited shield is unable to cast druid spells or use any of her supernatural or spell-like class abilities while doing so and for 24 hours thereafter.

nothing in there says anything about swords. just armor. So yeah, a Druid can swing around a pointy metal stick, but god forbid he try and situate a piece of metal between himself and other pointy sticks.

[Heliomance]

Well then, if you want to houserule anything about druids and scimitars, say they have to be wood but otherwise they still get the proficiency.

[Talic]

Well then, if you want to houserule anything about druids and scimitars, say they have to be wood but otherwise they still get the proficiency.

Or are in forgotten realms worshipping Mielikki

[Kaelik]

nothing in there says anything about swords. just armor. So yeah, a Druid can swing around a pointy metal stick, but god forbid he try and situate a piece of metal between himself and other pointy sticks.

What if they fight defensively? Should that count? Parrying is sort of like shielding.

[Sylian]

If they don't wanna play just because of these houserules, they're probably immature. I don't see any major problems with the rules, nothing gamebreaking. You might consider converting to Star Wars Roleplaying Saga rules. Interesting enough, with some tweaking, they should work very well in a Fantasy campaign. Hopefully your players will come to their senses. :smallsmile:

[Skyserpent]

What if they fight defensively? Should that count? Parrying is sort of like shielding.

Clearly Scimitar wielding druids have mastered a fighting style utilizing the WOODEN POMMEL of their weapons to deflect attacks when fighting defensively!

I have no idea...

[mostlyharmful]

I'm aware that my iteratives make physical damage better, but I don't mind. If it screws with a couple of non core feats I won't cry either, but I'll take a look at them just to be sure they're not brilliant must-haves. Again, I wish someone would tell me exactly what is more complicated about +14/+14/+14/+14 than +20/+15/+10/+5. Is it because an interesting decision must be made to use the former, while the latter is automatic?


Monks and whores? Is there some Singapore joke I should know about? Anyway, I'll be editing the monk AC/paladin smite rule so that it only penalizes multiclassers.

Your Iterative attacks aren't more powerful, they're less powerful. A LOT less. Against low AC opponents they up the damage yes, but when a melee character with enough base attack to get multiple attacks gets a CR appropriate opponent they're either a spellcaster so you'll never hit them anyway or they're built around combat in which case their AC is through the roof. In the RAW version the first couple of attacks might hit and the rest only get rolled for 20s, in yours the poor little fighter is just rolling for 20s throughout. Lots of your rules seem focussed on Gymping combat and skillmonkey classes, while nothing pusshes down the arcane users that end up breaking the system.

And Let the Pally and the Monk get all the lovin they need (and boy do they need it), cause it's just sad to kick the puppy.:smallfrown:

[Talic]

Most of it I just manage on the fly if problems come up, with the exception of Drizzt's Law: Anyone playing anything resembling Drizzt within a majority of similiarity sets* has their character permanently polymorphed into a Dex 3 Goblin.

*Three out of five from this list:
Race (Elf, since there are no drow in my campaign. Evil elves are elves with the evil alignment, not their own species.)
Weapon Selection
Rebellious Background
Personality
Class

So a half orc ranger dual wielding scimitars with a line for dervish, who left his evil orcish mother and her tribe becomes a gobbo?

What about the Elven mage who happens to be introspective, patient, and optimistic, and escaped the evil elven necromancers who raised him?

[Theodora]

Well, a friend of mine (who is really clever:nale: !) made his own rules, which in fact created a new game. It is a mixture between A Game of Thrones(not the TCG, but the RPG) and DND. It turned out really handy. There are no classes, but you can form your character however you like (mine resembled a ninja wizard) and the races were all human, but different ones: European human style, Asian, African, Arabian, etc, who have different bonus feats and skills.

[Renx]

Everyone uses house rules. On the OP's house rules I like all of them except for the hour limit on levels. It works as long as you don't start from level 1 or can play a lot.

[Overlard]

If they don't wanna play just because of these houserules, they're probably immature. I don't see any major problems with the rules, nothing gamebreaking. You might consider converting to Star Wars Roleplaying Saga rules. Interesting enough, with some tweaking, they should work very well in a Fantasy campaign. Hopefully your players will come to their senses. :smallsmile:
Not liking a set of rules is no sign of immaturity. There are game systems I like, and ones that I don't. The huge list of house rules here remove the game far enough from D&D 3.5 that I, the OP's prospective players, and the vast majority of the posters here dislike them, and would not wish to to play a game with them. When so many people have a problem with these houserules, it would seem that the flaw does not lie with the people.

And I've found it somewhat amusing and confusing that so many people think that druids can't use metal weapons, or that they can only use scimitars. A DM in an old game almost had a fit when a player turned up with a druid/barbarian who used... a greatsword. :smallfurious: We had to put the PHB in front of him and force him to read the entry in full, as he had just presumed they weren't able to use any metal objects apart from scimitars.

[Sylian]

Not liking the rules is fine. However, walking out of a game they agreed to play because of some houserules, without even discussing them isn't. The rules are just rules. They're not really that important, in the end. Unless you're really lawful, that is. :smalltongue:

Anyway, if he's a good DM and the players are good players and all that, the game should be fun regardless of the rules. Not realising this is immature, or perhaps foolish? Anyway, it's a mistake. However, we can't be sure that it's the rules that are the problem. They might've just changed their mind about an OOTS-campaign.

To the OP: Talk with the players, ask them why they changed their mind. If it is because of the rules, try to explain them and the reason behind. If they still don't want to play, compromise. Having a game with worse rules is better than no game, eh? If you're not willing to play without the houserules, then you shouldn't blame them for not being willing to play with your houserules. It goes two ways, after all.

[Morty]

If the players want to run in a game where everybody plays dragons with gestalt classes and Pun-pun is a low-level mook compared to their badassery, that's fine. One of them can go run it. Since the hard work in a game is done by me (as the GM), I'm running what I'm going to run, and the players are welcome to participate.


Yeah, right. Except it has nothing to to with the subject of the thread, as OP's houserules, wheter we like them or not, don't touch players' gamebreaking potential at all.

[Zincorium]

Not liking the rules is fine. However, walking out of a game they agreed to play because of some houserules, without even discussing them isn't. The rules are just rules. They're not really that important, in the end. Unless you're really lawful, that is. :smalltongue:

If they were walking out, maybe. This is a case of never wanting to be in the game at all.

Creating house rules with your players is a good idea, giving them a choice between a heavily-house ruled game and one that's more understandable, with no idea which DM is better, then the choice has been pretty darn obvious.


As far as walking out because of a house rule, I've done it. Granted, it was a serious abuse of power (deducting xp for out of game stuff) on their part. But sometimes rules that suck reduce the level of enjoyment you get out of the game enough that it's better to walk away and quit wasting time. So rules are somewhat important.

[Saithis Bladewing]

Yes, I have a decent list of house rules I use. Not really in the mood to list many, but one example is the fact that I don't inflict level loss for being raised from the dead.

[SoD]

Re-read the house rules, I still don't know why you don't like the racial weaponry. I think that the fact that the different races exist could be enough of an excuse, traditional weaponry. It might not be used often, and could usually be for ceromonial purposes, similar to the sword used for knighting people, but I would still have them there. Stuff like the two-bladed sword looks cool, and can seem impressive, spiked chains...yeah, I get the point here.

[PnP Fan]

I'm probably repeating other folks sentiments, but here's my take on house rules in general. The game, as written, has problems, and inevitably requires house rules. Those tend to be simple, common sense things. Other house rules are good for flavor, maybe for a specific campaign setting. Others, are just to make a game more fun (we use a Luck attribute for example, that is helpful in modifying important rolls). When I see that someone has re-written significant portions of the game (class skills, a number of class abilities, etc. . . ) that makes me nervous. I recently had the opportunity to join a shadowrun game. When the GM handed me a book of poorly written houserules that "improved the game", I just walked away. Not literally (guy is a friend, and wouldn't want to insult him), but I decided that learning the game again, and then relearning his houserules would be too much of a pain in the butt to bother.
Additionally, wide sweeping changes of rules tends to throw you off balance as a player, because now, you have no idea where you stand, or what an effective build is. Plus (not saying this is you, in particular), some of the GMs I've had that make these wide sweeping changes also tend to be kinda . . . mercurial. You dont know what they are going to do next, or how much time you'll spend debating over further changes to the rules. I suspect you don't fall in to that category, because you've at least written down your rules, which implies consistency on your part.
Specific things:
Okay, I totally agree with doing away with a lot of the double weapons. They alwasy struck me as. . .retarded, frankly. I mean, if swinging one point/sharp/stabby thing at my opponent means that I have to swing an equally pointy/sharp/stabby thing at myself at the same time (and lose accuracy because it's a double weapon!), well, I'll pick something else thank you very much.
All skills as class skills? Okay, I think that's a bit overboard, but my group does allow for some skills to be useable by all classes (spot, search, and listen for example), and folks seem happy with it.
I can understand doing away with XP, I use a rough equivalent (1/4 level, or 1/2 level) advancement that is mostly dependant upon what was accomplished in a session. I freely admit that there are problems with this however, especially when it comes to XP costs for item creation and spells. Until recently, none of my players ever went down the item creation road, so it worked just fine. Now that I'm dealing with Artificers, though, it could be a problem. I may return to XP awards again because of that.
What you may want to do instead of handing out houserules, is look at the issues that prompted you to make the houserules in the first place. Decide how many of them were purely subjective (your opinion, not actually a game problem), how many of them were problems with specific players (that may not be around anymore), and which one's were based on holes in the game (healing by drowning for example). The first two categories you should probably dump altogether, because they are subjective, and you may not have that problem player anymore. Houserules are generally something that a group of people agree on because it "fits flavor better" or "its more fun" or "makes more sense". The key thing is that everyone takes part in the decision, and it's not just handed down from on high.
Good luck in your next game!

[Blackbrrd]

Just about everything has been commented already I believe, but I have got a few suggestions:

a) Don't write down house rules that aren't changing the game - for instance A Handful of Dice is an good option, but you don't have to show it to new players. The same goes for simple iterative attacks.

b) "Because there are very few secret doors in forests, elves do not have the ability to passively notice secret doors." This is just fluff and not necessary to write down, besides who said elves can passively sense hidden doors because there are a lot of secret doors in forests? ;)

... etc

The point isn't that your house rules are bad, just that there are many of them, and they don't make that much of a difference. Cut down to just the house rules that really change the game like the skill point stuff and multi classing rules. The other ones you can just introduce as you go ;)

One more thing: you have changed a base mechanic ("Attacker Always Rolls"), this will be a turn off to many. Since you are at it, what about changing it to "Player always rolls"? Think about it - wouldn't you be kind of annoyed if the DM just stated: you failed your fortitude save to that disintegrate spell, you are dead! :P Rolling a dice yourself at least lets you fail the save yourself...

oh... on thing:
"A monk's Wisdom-derived AC bonus cannot exceed her monk level."

This one is just nasty to a 1st level monk, and you are just trying to close a loophole in the rules... What about adding: "This doesn't apply to a single class monk".

[XenoGeno]

I think the biggest problem with your house rules is that they don't seem to fit the campaign you're running, an "OotS style, rules-loose" game. I'll be honest with you, if someone told me they'd be running this style of game and then they gave me this huge list of new rules, some of which only for stuff that "doesn't make sense" (OotS game, remember? The stuff that doesnt make sense could cause some of the best moments!), I wouldn't play. If these were for a homebrewed world where orcs don't rape humans or whatever, then I'd be willing to play.

[Idea Man]

All skills as class seems unneccesarily open. You would need to add more skill points, or accept that you will never get all the skills you want. I like the idea of cross-class skills costing one-for-one. Why nerf cross-class skills more than they already are?

Removing death by massive damage; sure, it's a base rule, but I don't care. It's just an extra "Oops, you're dead!" situation, and one you weren't planning on, most times.

You want to remove double weapons and the spiked chain? You're call, but I've dealt with a CWM before. If he's going to maximize that weapon, then he'll suck at other battle tactics, like range weapons. He'll quickly realize his one-trick pony is boring, and so will the rest of his party. Just a note: the worst case scenario of this is really, really aggravating. (enlarge, large and in charge...)

As far as the monk/level dip issue, I just don't see the problem. Sure, the druid can really benefit from it, but only a) when not wearing armor [which can easily be better], or b) when wild shaped [most critters don't have an unbeatable AC to start]. Paladin dip; go ahead. You need three levels to make that pay off, and that's an investment.

Simple iterative attacks? What for? Really, that either strangles the fighters, or hands the battle to them on a silver platter (power attack and such).

Fewer dice is simpler? You still need to figure out the average of the replaced dice, which won't cut down on the math too much. Besides, there's something primally awesome about rolling huge wads of dice. :smallbiggrin:

No opposed rolls: not bad, not bad. I do something like that anyway for saves I don't want the party to know about, and it would take the randomness out of grappling, which is a big pain. It's why rolling defense, instead of a base 10 for AC, is a rotten house rule.

No XP...blech. Sure, you can do that, but it just leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.

Card-attributes. Hmm, bonus point for ingenuity, but I think point buy is far more balanced. It's why I moved away from rolled scores; one of my players is just too lucky. :smalltongue:

Your multiclassing statement is unclear. You don't seem to be a gestalt DM, so I can only assume you mean that a starting character gets the best benefits of the classes he starts with, so he doesn't have to "build him up". If this is to save time, I don't think it will work, as people will agonize over which classes will give them the best starting setup to begin with.

Anyway, I think most people use house rules in some form or another, even if just to ban celerity/timestop. We see a problem or a hole, and we fix it, or we have a plan for a story, and shape the game to fit.

[Jayabalard]

Re-read the house rules, I still don't know why you don't like the racial weaponry. I think that the fact that the different races exist could be enough of an excuse, traditional weaponry. It might not be used often, and could usually be for ceromonial purposes, similar to the sword used for knighting people, but I would still have them there. Stuff like the two-bladed sword looks cool, and can seem impressive, spiked chains...yeah, I get the point here.Racial weapons have not been removed... just some of the ridiculous ones, primarily double weapons, which in some cases happen to be racial weapons. Note that the dwarven war axe is not listed in the list of removed weapons.

[Matthew]

All skills as class seems unneccesarily open. You would need to add more skill points, or accept that you will never get all the skills you want. I like the idea of cross-class skills costing one-for-one. Why nerf cross-class skills more than they already are?

What are you talking about?


Simple iterative attacks? What for? Really, that either strangles the fighters, or hands the battle to them on a silver platter (power attack and such).

I dunno about that. It creates more tactical choices from where I'm standing.

[Sleet]

your way of leveling is arbitray and nonsensicel. Of course you should level after killing things of appropriate CR not "when the story says you should now be level X"

I disagree with most of the house rules here, but I'll defend this one. I haven't used XP in years. In my game people level up when we think it's about time to level up. It works extremely well, and people don't grub for points or look at NPCs and monsters as walking piles of XP.

[Tequila Sunrise]

Thanks for your thoughts eveyone. I will talk to the others in the group about this sometime, although most of them seem to have fallen off the map after we decided to play another guy's Galorian one-shot game, so I don't know when it'll happen.

If I do run a 3e game again with players who just don't like HRs, I think I just won't tell them about my HRs. I'll go back to awarding arbitrary amounts of XP, pretend to roll against their grapple checks while simply comparing their rolls to my DCs, use simple iterative attacks when it's advantagous for my NPCs, give NPCs whatever class skills are appropriate, etc... It would feel almost underhanded, but if the players don't like being in a big room with lots of options, I don't have any compuctions against casting illusory walls to make them feel safe and cozy.

[Moogle0119]

If I do run a 3e game again with players who just don't like HRs, I think I just won't tell them about my HRs. I'll go back to awarding arbitrary amounts of XP, pretend to roll against their grapple checks while simply comparing their rolls to my DCs, use simple iterative attacks when it's advantagous for my NPCs, give NPCs whatever class skills are appropriate, etc... It would feel almost underhanded, but if the players don't like being in a big room with lots of options, I don't have any compuctions against casting illusory walls to make them feel safe and cozy.

I'd be very cautious of doing that actually. Part of what makes a good D&D group is that the players trust the DM to not be underhanded in certain things (at least to an extent). If you are found out in this you will most certainly lose your gaming group in the same way most people would kick out a player if he constantly cheated on his stat/hp/attack/damage rolls. It's your call obviously but I'm speaking from experience (from the players side) when I say you may very well end up with all the players walking out on your game because you've lied to them.

[Overlard]

If I do run a 3e game again with players who just don't like HRs, I think I just won't tell them about my HRs. I'll go back to awarding arbitrary amounts of XP, pretend to roll against their grapple checks while simply comparing their rolls to my DCs, use simple iterative attacks when it's advantagous for my NPCs, give NPCs whatever class skills are appropriate, etc... It would feel almost underhanded, but if the players don't like being in a big room with lots of options, I don't have any compuctions against casting illusory walls to make them feel safe and cozy.
Your arrogance aside, you might think you're giving players more options, but you're actually removing a lot of choices that players like to make, and replacing them with mechanics that people either don't like, or aren't bothered about.

And I agree with Moogle, if I found out my DM had secretly been using his own rules when I thought we were playing a fair game that I knew the rules to, then I'd simply leave. It's a breach of contract between DM and player.

[Old_Man]

Tequila,

This isn't about players who just don't like house rules. This is about why you turned off your players when others implement house rules without much problem. Some of your house rules seem desirable or match other people's rules. However, I do see problems with both the form and function of your rules. To me, your presentation does not say "lighthearted and rules-loose goofy OotS type game." It says the opposite. As does the tone of your post and the fact that "there are a few things about the game that [you] just can't accept as-are when [you] have direct control over them."

Even before considering the mechanical function of your rules and their effect on the game, I would be repulsed by your presentation. The first thing I noticed was that your rules are negative and subjective: "I don't like…", "It's just more fun…", "There's no good reason…", etc. As a player, I may have a different opinion as to what constitutes fun. The second thing is that you have rules "it isn't necessary for players to know." If it isn't necessary, why include it? The third thing that immediately struck me was that you indicated that you don't like micromanagement. Good, most people don't, and if you don't want to be a micromanager, don't take on the responsibilities of the PCs. But the way you presented your rule just made you seem lazy and unwilling to perform the duties of a DM.

I would also be concerned by the function of some of your rules. House rules tend to fall into two functionary categories. First, house rules are made to correct a "game flaw". A game flaw would be anything in the standard rules that would impede playability for you and your group. This could be a widespread concern (CoDzilla seems to be a common complaint) or problem with a single player. These rules are generally reactionary, and arbitrary changes do not perform well. You encounter a flaw and apply a rule change, but to do so, you need to clearly identify the problem and then explain how your rule "improves" game play. As a correction, this type of rule tends to be endemic to the specific group and aggregate over time. The more you play with a specific group the more house rules you acquire. However, you recently started a group of gamers and expected them to accept your game play rules with little explanation.

The second function of house rule is created to fluff and flavor a campaign. While rules correcting game flaws are group specific (and work best when implemented with the cooperation of the entire group), these rules are setting specific and are established by the DM prior to play. They should be used to flesh out the world and guide the players. Since they affect the campaign from the start, these rules require even more consideration than game play rules. You need to justify the rule in the setting and campaign background.

Take another look at your house rules. Look at how many of them are your opinion about how the game should be played. Look at how many are arbitrary changes without a game based, troubleshooting explanation. Look at the ones that could be fluff, but are not tied into the background or story line. Do you see it? If you rewrote your rules, I think you could get a group to accept your rules. Some initially. Some over time. But if you implement them arbitrarily, you will find fewer people who will want you as a DM.

[Swordguy]

Yeah, right. Except it has nothing to to with the subject of the thread, as OP's houserules, wheter we like them or not, don't touch players' gamebreaking potential at all.

Congrats. You get an "out-of-context" cookie.

The POINT is that the OP's house rules are there to bring the flavor and ruleset he wants to run into a game of generic D&D. It's just that the flavor he wants requires a lot of house rules, because basic D&D doesn't inherently support the vision he wants to create.

It the players want a different flavor (like the aforementioned Gestalt Dragons), they should be welcome to go play their own game. But since Tequila Sunrise is the GM, he gets to set the flavor of what he wants to run.

The point of the thread isn't whether the HR are really good or not (though it's drifted there), the point was the OP asking what problems people had with house rules in general, and were his house rules "too much". That's different from whether or not they're good.

[Indon]

It's been forever since I didn't play a game with at least some house rules.

Some of the houserules I've encountered in the last couple years:

-No XP. Characters who craft get a crafting pool instead, or there are simply no XP-equivalent costs, though it rarely comes up.

-Diplomacy Does Not Work That Way.

-When using XP, there is no multiclass penalty.

The most house-ruled game I ever played did this:

All of the above when applicable, and

-No hit points; damage save system, with everything converted over.

-Critical Hit Table.

-No auto-success or failure; A natural 20 adds 10, a natural 1 subtracts 10. (Later changed to nat 1's doing nothing)

-Armor as DR (listed in Unearthed Arcana) and Class Defense Bonus.

-Mostly custom races.

-"Cultures" which gave racial-like abilities


My own Exalted game I'm currently running runs soak like a World of Darkness game (you roll soak, rather than it being a static deduction). Since attacks can now deal zero damage, mooks are less dangerous so it has a more OMG-the-awesomeness feel to it.

[lord_khaine]

Old_Man's post sums up my take on the OP better than i could have written it myself, gj :smallsmile:

[Tequila Sunrise]

Your arrogance aside, you might think you're giving players more options, but you're actually removing a lot of choices that players like to make, and replacing them with mechanics that people either don't like, or aren't bothered about.

And I agree with Moogle, if I found out my DM had secretly been using his own rules when I thought we were playing a fair game that I knew the rules to, then I'd simply leave. It's a breach of contract between DM and player.

You and Moogle made me chuckle. I can see how a player might have an immediate gut reaction if they found out that I wasn't restricting myself to RAW, but they can hardly criticize me for going beyond RAW when the option is always open for them. (Important note--I wouldn't use any of the few of my HRs which restrict players if I were to not tell them that I use HRs) And if they did criticize me, I woulnd't want to play with such petty players anyway.

[SilverClawShift]

I can see how a player might have an immediate gut reaction if they found out that I wasn't restricting myself to RAW
*snip*
And if they did criticize me, I woulnd't want to play with such petty players anyway.

Ah (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_complex)

You consider your friends reacting negatively to your lying to them to be petty. Got it.

Not really a lot else to say.

[Ellisande]

If I do run a 3e game again with players who just don't like HRs, I think I just won't tell them about my HRs...if the players don't like being in a big room with lots of options, I don't have any compuctions against casting illusory walls to make them feel safe and cozy.

I can see how a player might have an immediate gut reaction if they found out that I wasn't restricting myself to RAW

And if they did criticize me, I woulnd't want to play with such petty players anyway.

Several posters have commented on this arrogance that seems to saturate your last few posts. I might go so far as to call it disdain for your players--lying and deceiving them because you know so much better than they do.

To return to your original question, this is also the tone that came through when I read your house rules; a sense of 'my way or the highway' in terms of playstyle. Nevermind the fact that there are a large number of rules for the players to digest. Nevermind that there are rules that don't seem to make sense. It's the impression that the reader gets that indicates you feel superiour, and that you'll play in an controlling and inflexible manner* that's such a turn-off, not so much the rules themselves.

This is not to say that you're playing D&D WRONG, not in the slightest. This IS your game, and (as Swordguy says) you should play a game you enjoy. But it is to say that you're playing it in a manner that I think a lot of players would have trouble with. And to that extent, you should consider whether you're willing to be flexible enough to DM for this group, or if it would be best to take that third quote of yours to heart, and find a different group that meshes with the style you already have.

*An impression that is only reinforced by your follow-up posts.

[Azerian Kelimon]

To resume the other posters ideas: Congrats, you're a perfect example of the :miko: alignment. Lying to the players, underhandedness, disregarding their opinions? Nah, make it :nale:.

[Overlard]

Yeah, it looks like Tequila's problem is that he knows better than everyone else. Anyone who doesn't like his HRs is obviously not mentally capable of appreciating them, so it's his job to manipulate them into using them without their knowledge or consent. If they find out and react negatively, that's just them being petty.

It must be tough being that smart; everyone else just slows you down.

[Azerian Kelimon]

Aye. He should join the Dean Fellithor club. Astounding other people with your wits today!

[Clementx]

I guess I am the only one that gets the sarcasm of Tequila's posts. First everyone was complaining about his disclosure of house rules as homework, with several people stating he should just make **** up as he goes along. Then he says he will do that, and they say he is violating the sacred pact between DM and PC about knowing how things work.

Kinda hilarious, if I didn't think making fun of someone because everyone in the thread already had was amusing.

[Tequila Sunrise]

You guys are silly! :smallbiggrin: I never said anything about lying--I said that I wouldn't bother them with the details of the HRs that I apply to myself. I've already told this group that I encourage alternate classes, feats, spells and so forth and that stands regardless of my other HRs. If they want to stick with RAW that's fine, but they know that I don't.

[UserClone]

Tequila, have you considered the fact that if you use the "simple iterative attacks," which you seem to think works better, while letting your players use the normal ones, you could be giving yourself an unfair advantage? The thought of that definitely turns me off from playing in your game.

[JaxGaret]

Tequila, have you considered the fact that if you use the "simple iterative attacks," which you seem to think works better, while letting your players use the normal ones, you could be giving yourself an unfair advantage? The thought of that definitely turns me off from playing in your game.

Adjust the CR. Problem solved.

The 'rules' for DMs are more flexible than they are for players. As long as the game is well-run, DM and players alike are on the same page, and everyone is enjoying themselves most of the time, your job is done.

[Fatso]

I use a lot of house rules.

All are thoroughly debated and number-crunched by my gaming group on our private RPG-forum though so noone can claim not to know or anything.

Usually I just modify feats or the occasional character class that I deem to good or bad to be fun.

As for your house rules, I've seen worse and I've seen better. I have no real opinion for or against them except for the stat-generation but that's just because I like dice. :smallsmile:

[Swordguy]

As for your house rules, I've seen worse and I've seen better. I have no real opinion for or against them except for the stat-generation but that's just because I like dice. :smallsmile:

That's actually something I did like. But then, I really like Pinnacle's Deadlands, too. :smallbiggrin:

[Blanks]

Another version of houseruling:
I almost never lay out my rules in advance, mostly because i don't remember them. Just talk to the players as you go along.
This works for me, seeing as my houserules are more like ... house guidelines...

eg:
I don't need to read about spiked chains, halforcs and so on, im playing a spellcaster! (as i always do :)).
And since you made average damage for fireballs optional - im good to go :)

[EvilJames]

I use about 5 or 6 house rules in my 2nd ed game and none of them involve any drastic changes to the way the system works. that's what seems to be the problem as many people herer have pointed out your list is too daunting and the changes too drastic some of which don't make much sense in the long run

[Ellisande]

You guys are silly! I never said anything about lying...


I think I just won't tell them about my HRs. I'll go back to awarding arbitrary amounts of XP, pretend to roll against their grapple checks while simply comparing their rolls to my DCs, use {a different rules set} when it's advantagous for my NPCs... It would feel almost underhanded...

I recognize that reasonable opinions differ, but I consider this to be lying. And I would be very offended if a DM in my games did something like this.

Do not get me wrong, I recognize that the DM plays faster and looser with the rules than the players do--a good DM will fudge rolls from time to time, may not build all his NPCs with the strictest adherence to the character creation process, and so on. But I feel that the way you propose to change the rules crosses beyond that (unspoken) compact between players and DMs about the level of adherence to the rules as they are mutually understood*. This is doubly true given that you are deceiving your players--implementing your house rules behind their backs, after they'd already rejected including them in the game. Even if I had no problems with the rules themselves, I'd have a problem with including them secretly.


Perhaps the reason it feels underhanded is because it is.


*Obviously, the precise contents of such a compact differ from group to group.

[Overlard]

Adjust the CR. Problem solved.
Not at all. As XP is awarded not by encounter, but by "event", CRs are largely irrelevant except for the DM trying to work out what the players can handle without major casualties.

[Sergeantbrother]

Hey Tequila Sunrise, don't let the criticism here get you down. I have been playing D&D for close to 20 years and from my experience most DM's and players use and like house rules. I've been in really good games that had vastly more house rules than you have. My games have vastly more house rules than you have. I wont even bother to post any, no doubt many people here would try to track me down and kill me for them.

It seems to me that D&D forumites hate and despise house rules at a much higher rate than gamers I have met in person. This could be something weird about people have I gamed with or perhaps its a trend in online D&D forums. I think it might have to do with the forums. As you might have noticed, the great majority of posts on a D&D forum, including this one, seem to revolve around min-maxing and character optimization. This, of course, requires an intimate knowledge of the rules as well as numerous source books so that the players can combine the exactly right set of feats, prestige class, spells, magical items, etc. to have the ultimate character. Of course, house rules throw a wrench into such careful optimizations.

Let me go through and mention some of the house rules of your's that I like - since other people seem to be focusing on the ones that they don't like.

I think that characters suggesting rules for their concepts is a good idea, I have really enjoying doing this in some games.

I kinda like the no experience points rule. What I do myself is kind of a mix between that and the RAW. I hand out experience, but its not based on combat and encounters, but I just give it out using my own judgment when I feel that the characters have accomplished something deserve a reward. I also like to give lots of experience for good role playing.

I think that the shuffle method is OK. Personally, I hate randomization. I hate it so much that I feel disinclined to play in any group that rolls for attributes or for Hit Points. Just because in many past games I have been burned horribly by such random rolls. The card system is at least equal and sounds kinda fun, I think I prefer point buy or distribution though. That being the case, I like you using average hit points.

I agree with you about half-orcs. I don't see the point in having half-orcs as characters but not full orcs.

I like that you did away with alignment and multi-classing restrictions. Personally, I don't really use alignments. When it comes to paladins, I would say that they need to act appropriately - but that doesn't necessarily mean act exactly as the book defines as "Lawful Good." Many holy warriors in history and literature didn't act in such a fashion.

I had the same thought about druids and scimitars. I basically let them use any form of weapon that could be stone age - clubs, slings, bows & arrows, etc. If its primitive I say yes.

I like the restrictions on monks and paladins as well as multi-classing characters getting the best of both classes. It seems like you're trying to prevent people from exploiting the rules here. Basically, so that somebody wont dip into a level of paladin to get Divine Grace. It also frees people from the meta-game urge to pick one class as their first class. So If somebody wants to be a fighter-rogue, they wont always take the rogue part first for the extra skill points, which are surely more valuable than the 2 extra Hit Points that being a fighter first gets them. This means people are more inclined to do something thematic than rules optimization. Same thing with character age, it could allow somebody to play an older character with theme and role play in mind without needing to worry about attribute penalties. I also like that you allow Int based skill bonus points to be retroactive.

Strangely, you get ride of the d12 from your game and I change the great sword to do 1d12 instead of 2d6. I also think that some of the double weapons are ridiculous and silly.

As for barbarians, its another thing I do the opposite as what you do. In my games nobody gets to be literate for free except for clerics and wizards. In most ancient societies the majority of people were illiterate - even in "civilized" ancient societies.

I also like the idea behind making all skills class skills, but I think you take it a little too far. What I have done in my games was allowed players to have one additional class skill of their choosing and to exchange up to one class skill for another. For example, if a fighter character comes from a society where stealth attacks are a common tactic among warriors but where horse riding is extremely rare, then the character could get hide and move silently as class skills at the cost of losing the ride skill. I think that if you completely abandon the idea of cross class and in class skills that it thematically hurts the distinction between classes - which is one of the main focuses of D&D.

For the most part I like your house rules, the ones I didn't mention I'm largely neutral about. I would have no problem playing in your game.

[Telonius]

In general, I'm of the opinion that house rules should only be used if there's a problem (either from the players' perspective or the DM's). Ideally, the house rule should fix the problem in the best way possible, without creating new problems. Some of the rules (iterative attacks, no opposed rolls) seem that they're fixing something from the DM's perspective, and forcing the players into a more complicated system.

Regarding the Monk AC rule... I do think that it's a good idea to prevent a one-level dip for WIS-to-AC. That's a problem that does need fixing. But as a bunch of other people have suggested, Monks suck and don't need any dirt kicked on them when they're already down. My suggestion: make the AC bonus an ability that the Monk loses if they ever advance in something other than Monk. Same way with Divine Grace and the Paladin.

Cross-class skills are another thing that needs a bit of fixing. But, as people have mentioned, there are some problems in the way you go about it; it creates difficulties for the Rogue, Bard, and Wizard. I'd suggest a couple tweaks to it.

Solution 1: keep cross-class skills, but remove the cap on max ranks for cross-class. If your barbarian wants to max out perform (sousaphone), there's nothing stopping him; but he'll have to devote more skill points to it than a Bard.

Solution 2: Ditch cross-class skills, but throw your players a bone for specialization. Pick two skills for each class that are iconic skills of the class. Perform and Diplomacy for Bard, Search and Disable for Rogue, Spellcraft and Knowledge (arcana) for Wizard, etc. At level 1, 5, 10, 15, and 20, the players in that class get a +1 to those checks. Alternately, you could have the players each pick out two skills at character creation to get those bonuses.

Remember, you're the DM. You take away with one hand, but you have to give with the other. Most of the houserules up there take away options that players currently have. Other than the alignment rule (which I think is a great rule) the list doesn't give players very much.

[Craig1f]

If you want everyone to level at the same time, and under your control, then you should use the Action Point system, where Action Points represent extra XP that individual players, or the group, has earned. You can use Action Points in place of the XP cost for scrolls and for multiclassing. Action points can also be used for "heroic" actions, and "fate cards". I think it makes the game fun, but it's not everyone's cup of tea.

It helps players make it through encounters that the DM has accidentally made excessively hard. You can use an action point to stabilize a dying character, or to get an extra attack during a full-round (as with haste), or an extra move action.

Fate cards are also cool. You can allow players to buy fate cards for 2 or 3 action points, that can do weird things. Here are some examples from a campaign I'm in that uses this system. The character is unaware of these cards or their effects:
1) Give any one NPC an irrational fear of snakes. (We summoned snakes against the BBEM)
2) The next NPC you meet will be helpful (was useful when we were cornered in a cave in an orc village)
3) Make the town you're in, no matter how small, contain a library (must be played before you've checked to see if a library exists) (haven't used it yet)
4) A shop you need is open, regardless of the time of day (haven't used it yet)
5) Your journey to a specific destination will be uneventful (this saved our ass when we were escaping an orc village, with no healing left, with less than a day to reach the boat before it left)
6) Your arm or leg suddenly breaks (The DM says that if you can use this fate card in a way that is actually beneficial, you win two fate cards. I'm thinking that it is a great choice if you fail a will save against dominate or charm)
7) Help arrives (God did this ever save us ...)


The DM for this game levels everyone at the same time. We don't know our XP until we are between missions, and have a week to train. We get action points for showing up to every session, for good RP, and making good decisions. We can buy up to 1 fate card a session, and don't have to tell the DM which one we got (we draw them at random).

It adds an interesting dynamic to the game, but also makes it more of a game, and less roleplaying, since you can break the rules. On the other hand, it can help balance a fight where, oh I don't know, my 4th level barbarian gets dropped in one hit from full health because the undead monk got a critical hit on me.

Anyway, the action point system is online somewhere. I've seen it. I don't have a good listing of Fate Card suggestions for you though.

[Leadfeathermcc]

In general, I'm of the opinion that house rules should only be used if there's a problem (either from the players' perspective or the DM's). Ideally, the house rule should fix the problem in the best way possible, without creating new problems. Some of the rules (iterative attacks, no opposed rolls) seem that they're fixing something from the DM's perspective, and forcing the players into a more complicated system.


I would say there are two types of house rules. The first type as Telonius states are those that fix problems with the rules. Both players and DMs should have a voice in fixing these. Examples would be a house rule for Power Attack or Grapple.

The second type of house rule, is one that creates a feel for the type of game the DM wants to run. And if you tell the players upfront, before they start to think about character creation, it should not be an issue. An example would be there are no elves in my game.

There is a lot of overlap, but it is something to keep in mind when making up a list of house rules you want to use.

In my upcoming campaign I have removed most of the races from the game. It is necessary to run the type of campaign I want, it is not something I will ask permission for from my players, because there are plot reasons for it that they do not need to know.

I am also, after receiving some good advice on another thread, changing the way Power Attack works. This is a fundamental change to a rule, and I will be running it past my players before implementing it.

[F.L.]

As you posted initially in this thread, you were looking to run a light OOTS themed game. You then presented a long list of mechanical rules changes to your prospective players. This probably didn't strike the players as very rules-lite.

Oh, and I also take issue with some of your rules, but I guess this is just your particular style. I mainly run with just 1 house rule:

If you try any rediculous cheese, I will kill off your character. Brutally. Regardless of any intervening feats, supernatural abilities, etc.

[Indon]

Not at all. As XP is awarded not by encounter, but by "event", CRs are largely irrelevant except for the DM trying to work out what the players can handle without major casualties.

Yeah, that does exactly what you need it to.

If you make monsters more dangerous with a houserule, you adjust their CR upwards, so you, for instance, introduce less of them against the party, advance them less, give their leader less PC levels, and so on, in order to maintain the same CR.

[JaxGaret]

If you make monsters more dangerous with a houserule, you adjust their CR upwards, so you, for instance, introduce less of them against the party, advance them less, give their leader less PC levels, and so on, in order to maintain the same CR.

Agreed.

I'm not really sure what Overlard was trying to say there.

[Heliomance]

As you posted initially in this thread, you were looking to run a light OOTS themed game. You then presented a long list of mechanical rules changes to your prospective players. This probably didn't strike the players as very rules-lite.

Oh, and I also take issue with some of your rules, but I guess this is just your particular style. I mainly run with just 1 house rule:

If you try any rediculous cheese, I will kill off your character. Brutally. Regardless of any intervening feats, supernatural abilities, etc.

The DM on a freestyle RP forum I belong to does that. The choices for smackdown are 1) Having the avatar of the game universe open a family-sized can of whoopass on you, or 2) Be eaten by a giant one-eyed space cat. (long story)

[Swordguy]

The second type of house rule, is one that creates a feel for the type of game the DM wants to run. And if you tell the players upfront, before they start to think about character creation, it should not be an issue. An example would be there are no elves in my game.


This! This! A thousand times, THIS!

It is this precise thing that I think the OP is trying to accomplish with the vast majority of these house rules. And, as he's posting them up front to his players, I fail to see the issue (except that the players want a different setting out of him).

[Serenity]

Things like 'no double weapons' don't exactly create setting fluff. Adjusting racial abilities as in the elven example, and changing half-orcs to orcs does, but they're phrased in such a manner that it seems more like whining rather than 'this is how it is in my setting.' Also, they simply don't match the setting he claimed he was trying to run!

[BardicDuelist]

One thing, which may, or may not be true for your players, is this:

If I were playing an OoTS-esque campaign, I would want the rules inconsistancies and fallacies there because one of the points of OoTS is that the game is mocked, in a way. By eliminating the rules, or introducing new concepts to the players which they are unfimiliar with, you take away much of the potential for this.

Also, the "flavor" of the setting hould be "generic D&D," as OoTS is, in a way. Sure, you can have interesting things that have nothing to do with sterotypes and humor, but remember that if you characters were wanting to play this, they were probably expecting a lot of generic D&D too.

Just my two cents.

[mikethepoor]

I've run only one session so far (competent player, aspiring DM), and I used just one house rule in it. In that game, players gained two ability score points every fourth level, with the restriction that one must improve a physical score and one a mental score.

In regards to the house rules mentioned by the OP, some of those rules do seem unnecessarily complex, and it looks like there are more than really needed. That's just my opinion, though I could see using pieces of that system.

[Tequila Sunrise]

This! This! A thousand times, THIS!

It is this precise thing that I think the OP is trying to accomplish with the vast majority of these house rules. And, as he's posting them up front to his players, I fail to see the issue (except that the players want a different setting out of him).


Hey Tequila Sunrise, don't let the criticism here get you down. I have been playing D&D for close to 20 years and from my experience most DM's and players use and like house rules. I've been in really good games that had vastly more house rules than you have. My games have vastly more house rules than you have. I wont even bother to post any, no doubt many people here would try to track me down and kill me for them.

Thanks for the votes of confidence! It's been a shock to realize how resistant so many players are to house rules, and it's nice to know that other gamers share my liberal views about rules.

[Ellisande]

It's been a shock to realize how resistant so many players are to house rules...

If you honestly believe that this is what the majority of people who have commented in this thread have either said or meant, I don't think you've been reading very closely or have been trying to understand what they've been trying to tell you.

Sergeantbrother is right; you shouldn't let the criticisms get you down. And you shouldn't change something that's working for you merely because someone else thinks or does differently. But you should consider what they have to say, and its saddening to me to see such a blithe and inaccurate dismissal of those who gave honest and thoughtful advice. Careful consideration on your part would have enriched your game, even if you ultimately rejected any changes; failing to consider it at all simply wastes your effort in asking for advice in the first place.

[Leadfeathermcc]

Thanks for the votes of confidence! It's been a shock to realize how resistant so many players are to house rules, and it's nice to know that other gamers share my liberal views about rules.

Honestly my post was not about sharing a liberal view about rules. My post, poorly written though it was, was pointing out that there are two different types of house rules. Ones that change the fundamental rules of the game and ones that change the fluff in a campaign. If you want my advice on house rules in general. Off the top of my head, here are the questions I ask myself when gathering rules for a new campaign.

1. Does this rule slow down the game?
2. Is this rule easy to remember?
3. Is this rule arbitrary, or does it have a purpose?
4. Can I explain all of my house rules in under 5 minutes?