Most Common House Rules?

[ciopo]

ooooooh I remembered one, which I'm not sure whether it's an houserule or the actual rules : moving through allies is considered difficult terrain

[PoeticallyPsyco]

A full attack action is an action that takes an full-round, cannot be used with start/complete full-round action standard action and cannot be moved during. Actually making the attacks is reserved for the full attack action, which is defined differently for some odd reason. "The" and "a" are distinct, after all.

I still don't think that's quite right. Your interpretation could be correct if the line was "A flurry of blows is a full attack action" or better yet "A flurry of blows is a type of full attack action", but in the actual line

A monk must use a full attack action to strike with a flurry of blows.

"use a full attack action" is a conditional statement, not a definition of FoB. The statement doesn't define FoB as a type of full attack, it says that you can only make one while you are already making a full attack action. Any action that counts as a full attack action meets that condition, and allows you to use Flurry of Blows. A full attack made with TWF or natural weapons is still unambiguously a full attack; therefore, while making it, you can also use Flurry of Blows to add an additional attack for the specified FoB penalties.

Flurry of Blows is not in fact an action at all; it's a rider effect on a full attack action, letting you "make one extra attack in a round at [your] highest base attack bonus".

[ciopo]

Flurry of Blows is not in fact an action at all; it's a rider effect on a full attack action.

Uh, that's an interesting distinction, are there other such riders? I've always read such riders as substituting the normal behavior of the type of action that triggers them.

The most common such example I can think of is our beloved pounce, it substitutes the singular attack with a full attack, it does not let us make a full attack on top of the singular attack of the charge


.... or does it?

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Uh, that's an interesting distinction, are there other such riders? I've always read such riders as substituting the normal behavior of the type of action that triggers them.

The most common such example I can think of is our beloved pounce, it substitutes the singular attack with a full attack, it does not let us make a full attack on top of the singular attack of the charge

.... or does it?

Pounce is a weird example, because it's been written and rewritten so many different times. Some versions replace the single attack at the end of a charge with a full attack; some versions let you make a full attack after the charge (presumably including the normal charge attack). Depends on the specific wording.

[Quertus]

ooooooh I remembered one, which I'm not sure whether it's an houserule or the actual rules : moving through allies is considered difficult terrain

I should hope moving through allies is considered difficult terrain, at the very least! Unless you're a blood magus, or your allies are Treants, and you're using Tree Stride, or some other similar scenario.

Difficult, and messy

[Calthropstu]

I should hope moving through allies is considered difficult terrain, at the very least! Unless you're a blood magus, or your allies are Treants, and you're using Tree Stride, or some other similar scenario.

Difficult, and messy

I am now imagining a guy poping out of another guy's chest shouting "Attack of opportunity" as the party's opponents stares in disbelief stabs someone adjacent and slips back through the hole.

[Kitsuneymg]

Pathfinder: I use the unchained barbarian rage for all rage effects. It’s not as good for two handed combat, but it simplifies hp and makes two weapon a bit more viable. Especially if you have prodigious TWF on the table.

For those that don’t know PF, you get a morale bonus to hit and melee/throw damage, will saves, and 2 temp hp/hd. It solves the issue of barbarians dying when they calm down.

[tiercel]

Last time this happened reality was retconed so far and so hard that our party was whisked from a timeline where we opposed a trickster demi-god trying to wrest control of the 8 scepters underpining magic in the world, to a timeline where we opposed a cabal of vampire-sorcerer tyrants lording over humanity within the last few safe city-states while His Dark Materials specter expies stalked the land. We agreed that taking the divine wish granting Macguffin charged with the queued up wishes from a hundred generations, out of the divine magic suppression chamber stopping all these pent up wishes from suddenly discharging at the same time, might have been a bad idea.

I'm not sure how well this works in practice. It's true that players can't win an arms race against the DM, but that has only imperfect efficacy in causing them to stop escalating.

I think that Raven777’s reply kinda answers RandomPeasant’s concern, but to elaborate: if players actually want to play something like Tippyverse and the DM is willing to go full bore, this is (1) fun for everyone, so, cool and (2) more internally consistent than having potentially thousands of years of history — including potentially some individuals that old (elves, dragons, liches, etc etc) — and yet no one, even BBEGs who are if anything MORE consumed with power and less morally constrained than most PCs, has figured out that bog-standard spells and effects can be abused — until the PCs come along.

The other way around, it’s a fantasy anthropic principle: if the campaign setting / premade adventure doesn’t look like the Tippyverse and/or a post-apocalyptic wasteland due to shadowpocalypse/wightpocalypse/Locate City bombs/IHS-the-Sun/etc., but instead looks like some flavor of pseudo-medieval fantasy world somewhere on the Greyhawk-Faerun-Eberron spectrum, it’s presumably because certain rules DON’T offer world-breaking/literally infinite power.

Summed up, a standard fantasy world requires “reasonable DM” intervention/interpretation, not “just RAW.” Ideally, the DM finds out what is reasonable for the table by….asking.

[Kaleph]

ooooooh I remembered one, which I'm not sure whether it's an houserule or the actual rules : moving through allies is considered difficult terrain

I am curious about how the official rule is. We have a house rule that everyone can move through its allies without hindrance. I like yours more since it would count like "squeezing" through a space, which is smaller than yourself.

I guess that maybe RAW it's simple impossible to move through an occupied square...

[Lilapop]

I am curious about how the official rule is. We have a house rule that everyone can move through its allies without hindrance. I like yours more since it would count like "squeezing" through a space, which is smaller than yourself.

I guess that maybe RAW it's simple impossible to move through an occupied square...

https://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/mo...throughaSquare

[Kaleph]

So, it wasn't an house rule after all.
You know, that's something we've always done like that as a group, until we couldn't recall anymore (and didn't bother to check) it it was an house rule, or it's how the PHB describes it.

Thank you for researching it for me!

[Thurbane]

Some creatures break the above rules. A creature that completely fills the squares it occupies cannot be moved past, even with the Tumble skill or similar special abilities.

Do you think the dev that wrote this sentence was specifically thinking of a Gelatinous Cube?

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Do you think the dev that wrote this sentence was specifically thinking of a Gelatinous Cube?

Indubitably!

[Elves]

Uh, that's an interesting distinction, are there other such riders? I've always read such riders as substituting the normal behavior of the type of action that triggers them.

Other ways of getting bonus attacks, like two-weapon fighting and iteratives themselves.

[Arkhios]

Pathfinder: I use the unchained barbarian rage for all rage effects. It’s not as good for two handed combat, but it simplifies hp and makes two weapon a bit more viable. Especially if you have prodigious TWF on the table.

For those that don’t know PF, you get a morale bonus to hit and melee/throw damage, will saves, and 2 temp hp/hd. It solves the issue of barbarians dying when they calm down.

Interesting bit about Unchained Rage is that it, –perhaps inadvertently, perhaps intentionally –encourages alternative approaches for melee, aside from the standard Brute Strength, because the unchained rage modifier applies to all melee/thrown attacks and melee/thrown damage rolls, whether you used strength, dexterity, or some other ability score in the first place, and the bonus is same regardless of the weapon being in main hand or off-hand. So, even a small race such as halfling could become a decent dual wielding barbarian using their higher base dexterity to their advantage.

[Raven777]

Interesting bit about Unchained Rage is that it, –perhaps inadvertently, perhaps intentionally –encourages alternative approaches for melee, aside from the standard Brute Strength, because the unchained rage modifier applies to all melee/thrown attacks and melee/thrown damage rolls, whether you used strength, dexterity, or some other ability score in the first place, and the bonus is same regardless of the weapon being in main hand or off-hand. So, even a small race such as halfling could become a decent dual wielding barbarian using their higher base dexterity to their advantage.

Now I'm just imagining a Dex based Barbarian who's so angry, he starts doing Gun Kata.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Now I'm just imagining a Dex based Barbarian who's so angry, he starts doing Gun Kata.

That's the best idea I've heard all day.

[vasilidor]

I see a lot of critical success and failure on skill checks. and I hate it. a 1 should not screw you over when you are trying to climb up a knotted rope when you have a +30 to climb. a natural 20 should not grant success to bluff the dragon when all you have is a -2 on charisma.

[Raven777]

I see a lot of critical success and failure on skill checks. and I hate it. a 1 should not screw you over when you are trying to climb up a knotted rope when you have a +30 to climb. a natural 20 should not grant success to bluff the dragon when all you have is a -2 on charisma.

See these as modeling occurences that are outside the character's control. The rope scraping against a sharp rock and snapping.
The dragon deciding to humor the bluff. (The dragon knows you're bluffing, but he's intrigued enough with where you're going with this that he rolls with it for a bit).

Roleplay works best alongside the dice rolls, not in spite of them.

Probably better to confirm critical faillures and successes, though.

If you succeed on the confirmation roll after a critical faillure: A second before the rope snaps, the last few strands give you enough leverage to propel yourself upward, grabbing the edge of the cliff with one hand. With great effort, you pull yourself over the cliff. You are safe. You don't drop to your death, but you lost your rope.

If you fail on the confirmation roll after a critical success: The dragon appears intrigued by your tall tale, letting you carry on and pressing you for copious amounts of details... until the corners of his jagged maw suddenly curl into a toothy grin, and he bellows a raucous laughter. The beast does not believe you, but he's entertained enough to not devour you on the spot. The dragon doesn't believe you, but you didn't anger it.

Also makes for better narrative on the fly!

[RandomPeasant]

I see a lot of critical success and failure on skill checks. and I hate it. a 1 should not screw you over when you are trying to climb up a knotted rope when you have a +30 to climb. a natural 20 should not grant success to bluff the dragon when all you have is a -2 on charisma.

The whole "natural 1 is an automatic failure" thing is just brutal for PCs, and it encourages really obnoxious avenues of optimization while making certain kinds of encounters really tedious. The one time a natural 20 lets you succeed at a critical juncture may lead to a cool story, but it comes with a lot of other times when you rolled a natural 1 against the kill spell from a mook caster and died.

"Fumble" type rules also have a common failure where they scale with number of dice rolled in systems where experts roll more dice, leading to absurdities like duels between master swordsman being decided by the first guy to cut his own head off.

[rel]

It's a difficult problem to address mechanically;

• You want your dice roll to matter, there should be a significant chance of success and failure, otherwise why roll at all.
• You want the unskilled character to be able to participate alongside the skilled character. When the GM says, 'everyone roll X', that X roll should matter for each member of the party.
• Finally, you want characters to grow meaningfully over time, to get better at existing skills, to learn new skills, to generally get better.

Striking a balance between these 3 goals is so difficult that I still haven't found a system that does so to my satisfaction.

Fumbles and crits are a rather hamfisted approach; Rolls are genuinely always meaningful. However, while everyone can technically always participate, in practice it isn't reliable enough for it to matter.

The real loss is character growth; your master thief can't run through the thieves guild entrance exam obstacle course before breakfast just to stay sharp because they are sure to fail at least one of the 100 easy rolls and trip over a bucket or step on a rake.

[vasilidor]

Ah yes...


FUMBLE RULES >.>

<.<


*knocks them off the table Like a petulant kitten*

Lets pretend like no one ever made them and move on.


please?

[Batcathat]

The real loss is character growth; your master thief can't run through the thieves guild entrance exam obstacle course before breakfast just to stay sharp because they are sure to fail at least one of the 100 easy rolls and trip over a bucket or step on a rake.

It can also be a little bad for realism. It's not like surgeons typically kill one in twenty patients.

[Tzardok]

Or one in twenty people who try to jump to the moon actually manages it.

[Lilapop]

It's a difficult problem to address mechanically
[...]
Fumbles and crits are a rather hamfisted approach; Rolls are genuinely always meaningful. However, while everyone can technically always participate, in practice it isn't reliable enough for it to matter.

A potential way out is grades of success: reduced damage, no (or reduced) progress on climb/swim, the crafted weapon is only +2 masterwork instead of +5 masterwork, etc. Would require tons of work to apply to an existing system, especially one as sprawling as D&D 3.5, but should be possible when designing something from scratch.

Getting back to the topic of "houserules that are just misinterpreted actual rules": For the longest time, I thought everything was sold at half price, including gems and jewelry. So I allow your 5 gp gold ring + 95 gp amethyst to count as 100 gp worth of "rare magical materials" for turning it into a ring of protection +1. You reimburse the crafter for the remaining 900 gp of magical oil and essential dust (or loot it from team evil's Q), and you pay him another 1000 gp for his time, profit margin, and 80 XP worth of ambrosia.

[vasilidor]

I frequently house rule the magic mart. you are not guaranteed to get your magic item every time. the odds will never be 0 and there are ways to improve your odds through skills and roll play. you can check a base of once every month and your odds vary based on what type of item and how powerful it is. Items with higher caster level requirements are harder to find than those of lower caster level items.

[Xervous]

Oh fumble rules. I haven’t had to forgo a table because of them yet, but that’s due to me GMing frequently and other systems having reasonable fumble rules that more frequently afflict the less competent characters.

[RexDart]

The whole "natural 1 is an automatic failure" thing is just brutal for PCs, and it encourages really obnoxious avenues of optimization while making certain kinds of encounters really tedious. The one time a natural 20 lets you succeed at a critical juncture may lead to a cool story, but it comes with a lot of other times when you rolled a natural 1 against the kill spell from a mook caster and died.

"Fumble" type rules also have a common failure where they scale with number of dice rolled in systems where experts roll more dice, leading to absurdities like duels between master swordsman being decided by the first guy to cut his own head off.

Fumble rules in a d20-based system are only made by people who don't understand math. People don't realize how often a 1 in 20 chance comes up when you're making lots of rolls.

I could perhaps make exceptions for things like untrained use, wielding martial weapons when you lack the proficiency, or (the Three Stooges scenario) when you have 1 point in Profession (Plumber) but a -3 INT modifier.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

One rule my group experimented with was that instead of nothing special about natural 1s/20s on skill checks or automatic failures/successes on the same, you get a bonus or penalty to the roll when you roll one or the other.

We also floated the idea of using 2d10 or 3d6 for skill checks, so there's still significant variance, but your total bonus is a bit more likely to be the deciding factor.

[Thurbane]

I think if a table must have fumble rules (and I prefer if it doesn't), then at the very least you should need to "confirm" the fumble, the same way you confirm crits.

You roll a natural 1: roll again. If the second roll would have hit, then the 1 is just a miss, without any fumble applied.