House Rules for "Realism"


Homebrew and House Rules

Liberty's Edge

Of course, I don't mean real realism. I mean "grittiness" or "simulationism" or any other word that implies making the Pathfinder rules and their implied universe more "medieval."

I think the first thing that needs to happen is to increase the value of the shield. Shields are perhaps the most common and important article of war in the world, across cultures and throughout history. Shields should drastically increase a character's survivability. This is, after all, why they saw such widespread use, and still do today. I suggest increasing the shield bonus to AC and allowing it to apply to CMD at the very least.

Second, spellcasting doesn't need to be reduced in power or utility, just efficiency. Pathfinder (and d20 in general) spellcasters are extremely efficient and the world should look nothing like a medieval Earth given their presence. Making spellcasting slow, costly and uncertain would go a long way toward adjusting this. However, the point wouldn't be to nerf PC spellcasters, so perhaps rarity is enough of an answer (although this can create problem with PC casters getting access to new spells, teachers, etc...)

What other rules changes or assumptions could be used to help anchor Pathfinder to a more "realistic" milieu?


This is a tough question and comes down to a few large issues, the biggest being the degree of 'verisimilitude' you desire. The second biggest is that what constitutes 'realism' for one person is vastly different from another. An easy way to illustrate this is to bring up the English Longbow and it's military effectiveness. You'll get a half dozen people talking about the 'truth' of the matter, but the 'truth' is that not even among medieval historians is there a consensus on that issue.

I recall a game I ran in which my large sprawling medieval technology empire had printing presses, bank networks, a massive system of roads and canals, a highly efficient government bureaucracy based on abstract morality tests, and a few other things. I was called several times for creating an unrealistic medieval world, despite the fact my empire was based on early Song era China. Because verisimilitude often comes down to 'feel' less than truth.

Okay, toss that out of the way and on to the question; rules changes that would make the game 'grittier'.

The 800 lb gorilla in this conversation is HP and their implementation, especially incremental increases for level. A 'gritty' game, I think by near definition means a game at which at no point is a 50 ft pit trap something to just sort of deal with and move on, or where a half dozen guys with cross-bows are anything but a very seriously deadly threat. Runequest, in it's various iterations has handled this pretty well, and I would encourage you to look at other RPG examples of HP implementation including some variation of 'Wounds' vs. 'Vigor' or whatever their doing these days.

So yeah I would say in general; increase the deadliness of combat in general and of weapons specifically. At the same time increase the value of armour and shields. Pathfinder, like 3.5 before it, worked on a model where Armour is intensely useful, but only as one of a dozen ways to increase your AC. Frankly this I think is actually the sort of conversation that goes back to 1st edition D&D, agan there are other RPG's with answers, and others who have worked out answers within the confines of the systems at present; Armour as DR for example combined with a sort of wound system where taking 10 points of damage could mean your dead or seriously maimed no matter what level you are might go some distance to easing some of the difficulties.

With the changing of HP I think the other thing to do is get rid of resurrection magic entirely, and limit or reduce healing magic.

Ultimately I suppose I don't really think pathfinder is a good RPG fit for what you want, and I'm sure others will be able to point ot more concrete examples of rules modifications that would work, but there is a beginning I guess?


Two PDFs that might help with "grittier" rules from Eridanus Books. They present some interesting information and ideas.


Play low-level. E4-E8 is good for gritty.

I'm thinking of testing out something new with shields for my next E7 game - instead of them granting +1/+1/+2/+4 AC, they'd grant +2/+3/+6/+8 AC - but if the opponent misses by less than the bonus, the shield takes the damage instead, and if it takes any damage after hardness, you lose the bonus for the round. Basically, shields become expendables, very useful when you have one - but if you're up against an ogre, you risk losing it.


Raynard, on top of rarity for wizards, you can stack personality. In my games, PC wizards are special snowflakes in that they only need an hour to prepare spells. NPC wizards need 10 hours to keep their skills up. If they miss more than a week or so, they lose their powers. Worse still, the long hours in meditation, sending their souls to other worlds tend to make them crazy.


stringburka wrote:
Play low-level. E4-E8 is good for gritty.

A part of why this helps is because in E6, you can designate a level, like 4th, as "professional mastery." There is no reason why you couldn't have whole covens or special forces that are 4th. Once the PCs enter that world, even at 6th level, there are still normal people that can fight them.


This a great question. I'm having a lot of trouble reconciling a "medieval" fantasy setting that completely ignores the possibility of magic-users in the potential advancement of the global society. You would think some wizards would get together and figure out solutions to hunger, sewage, irrigation, construction, travel, etc, leaving little resemblance to the historical Earth societies much of fantasy gaming is based on.

But I'm a GM, not an author.

Liberty's Edge

As to hit points: I think some variant of Wound/Vitality points would work well here. Only PCs and "important" NPCs would have vitality points, and certain things -- like falls -- would always do Wound damage. Plus, maybe, *any* wound damage is rolled with exploding dice.

On magic: for "combat magic" I think the best way to reduce efficiency is to make it take long -- a full round action, at least, to cast any spell. For non-combat magic it should cost too much to make it regular. It isn't necessarily that a wizard shouldn't be able to raise a stone wall via magic, it should just cost more *to the wizard* than to have a bunch of slaves build it.

Monsters, particularly powerful ones like dragons, should be relatively rare -- common enough to strike fear into the peasantry, powerful enough to make even kings quake, but rare enough that they don't obviate basic medieval defense systems like stockades.

For the record, this is more of an academic exercise for me, since I am currently running one mega-dungeon crawl and about to start Jade Regent, but it's interesting nonetheless.


One way to do this, I suppose, is just to start over. I think there's too much invested in a game like Pathfinder, to simply modify it. Realism (of the sort you are discussion) runs smack into a wall of dragons, spells, non-human human-like races, undead, multiple actual gods, other planes of existence, etc.

If you pick a pre-Renaissance European setting that has a full and rich history of things like belief in fairies and dragons, or an acceptance of other dimensions (something akin to a fey realm, or a land on the other side of mirrors, or whatever), and are willing to accept things like ghosts and hauntings, and can throw in witches and hexes and their curses and spells, then you have something.

Heck, re-reading Macbeth should give you plenty to work with.

But, while it's possible to put something like that, as a campaign, into the Pathfinder mold, it might be easier to strip the whole thing down, grab the elements you want, and create a play system around it.

Dave

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