Here are some house rules ill be using in my upcoming skulls & shackles campaign, criticize away.
1: Ability Generation
You can roll your ability scores or you can choose an array.
If you roll, roll 3d6 six times to determine your scores, if any score is below 7 it counts as a 7.
Your ability modifiers should total +7 after rolling, if not choose a number of advantages or disadvantages until you make up the difference.
Advantages
+2 to an ability score, this advantage must be applied once per ability before it can be applied a second time.
Gain a hit dice, for hit points only, can be taken twice.
Gain a class skill with 1 rank, can be taken twice.
Gain a bonus feat, must meet prerequisites. Can be taken twice.
Gain 2,000gp extra starting wealth. Can be taken three times.
Disadvantages
-2 to an ability score, this disadvantage must be applied once per ability before it can be applied a second time.
Take a minimum on a hit die roll, this disadvantage can be taken twice, and doesn't affect your first hit dice.
Lose your first feat, the second time this is taken you lose your third level feat.
Begin play with no starting gear, or ½ an NPCs wealth
Suffer a -2 penalty on a saving throw, this can be take once per save.
Suffer a -4 penalty on Initiative. Can be taken taken only once.
You suffer a -2 penalty to armor class, can be taken twice.
If you don't want to roll you can choose one of the following arrays
16, 15, 14, 13, 11, 9
15, 14, 13, 12, 12, 11
16, 16, 13, 12, 11, 9
2: Races
When deciding on a race you may choose any race in the advanced race guide with the exception of
the ones in the race builder, be warned, if you choose an advanced or monstrous race, you'll need to choose a number of disadvantages, based on how many points the race consists of for every 4 points past 11 a disadvantage needs to be chosen.
Some racial abilities are quite powerful, you can also ask your GM to make a race more playable by toning down a racial ability.
If there are other races, that you would like to play that this guide doesn't cover, then ask the GM to
create it.
You may also choose any race that your gm has premade for his campaign.
3: Experience
Your character levels up for every 1000 experience points he gains, an Encounter rewards a set amount of experience based on it's difficulty.
4: Starting Wealth
Use the NPC's starting wealth when making character's higher then 1st level.
5: No Favored Classes
Half-elves still gain their favored class.
You may favor a class at the cost of a feat.
6: Base Saves
All your base saves are equal to 1/2 your total character level, if your first class has a good save bonus
you gain a +2 class bonus to that save, this bonus doesn't stack with other classes base saves, it instead
increases it by 1, For example a level 4 fighter, 2 barbarian has a base fortitude of +6, +3 for half level
+3 class bonus.
7: Hit Points
You take maximum at 1st level, each level afterwords you gain a fixed amount of hp based on your hit dice; d6=4, d8=5, d10=6, d12=7.
Each level up at your option, you may roll your hit dice.
Skulls & Shackles will be using the wounds & vigor variant, these rules are fully detailed in Ultimate Combat on page 206. They also use the above rules for hit dice.
8: Classes
Fighter
Weapon Mastery: also reduces the critical threat range of chosen weapon by 2.
Monk
A monk's AC bonus doesn't stack with armor bonuses.
Paladin
Smite Evil(Su): As a swift action, the paladin can make an attack at his highest attack bonus plus his charisma bonus. If it hits it does maximum damage plus additional damage equal to the paladin's class level, bypassing any damage reduction the target may have. This attack is a critical hit if the target is a evil outsider, dragon, or undead.
The paladin can use this ability once per day, and again at 3rd level and every odd-numbered paladin class level thereafter, if the paladin takes an Archetype that limits his uses of smite evil, it follows the normal progression instead.
Holy Vindicator
Vindicator's Shield: The Vindicator gains Channeled Shield Wall(UM 143) as a bonus feat, plus when
the vindicator uses this ability he gains temporary hp equal to the channeled energy maximized for 24
hours.
When you have 5 channel dice the deflection bonus improves to +3, +4 at 7 dice, and +5 at 9 dice.
Magus
Spellstrike: costs 1 arcana per use.
9: Skills
Acrobatics: A successful DC 20 acrobatics check allows you to stand from prone as a swift action,
a DC 30 check makes it a free action, if you beat an adjacent opponent's CMD it doesn't provoke an attack of oppurtunity.
Appraise: The GM will take your appraise skill into account when telling you how much gems and art
are worth.
Heal: You can expend two uses of a healer's kit to treat deadly wounds, this takes 1 minute to perform,
and heals a number of hit points equal to your heal check result minus 15, a negative result does mean
damage Note a healer's Kit does provide a +2 bonus on the heal check.
10: Attacks
All iterative attacks, and offhand attacks always do average damage.
11: Criticals
Don't roll threat rolls, if your first roll is a critical threat and it hits their armor class, you critically hit,
effects that add a bonus to threat rolls, add a bonus to attack rolls that threaten a crit, plus they add the
same bonus to critical damage.
12: Parry
New Combat Maneuver: Parry
When an attack is going to hit you, as an immediate action you can make a combat maneuver check to
negate the hit as long as your check exceeds the attack roll, if it's a ranged attack you can only parry it
if you exceed the attack roll by 5.
You can ready a Parry attempt as a ready action, if so you gain a +2 bonus on the attempt plus you make the parry roll before their attack roll is made.
Bonuses gained from feats and magic add to your parry attempt so it is safe to use the highest attack
bonus with that weapon.
The DC to parry armed opponents unarmed is increased by 5, unless you have improved unarmed strike.
A Defensive Weapon will always add it's bonus to parry attempts even when it used for AC.
Duelists add their class level to Parry attempts. This feature replaces their parry and riposte abilities.
Duelists gain Improved Parry, and Greater Parry as bonus feats, as soon as the meet the prerequisites.
Improved Parry(Combat)
Prerequisite: Int 13, Combat Expertise
Benefit: You gain a +2 bonus on parry attempts, also when you beat their attack roll by 5 they provoke
an attack of opportunity from you.
Greater Parry(Combat)
Prerequisite: Int 13, Combat Expertise, Improved Parry, Base Attack +6
Benefit: You receive a +2 bonus on parry checks, plus you can forgo your attacks for additional parry attempts, using the attack bonus of the sacrificed attack.
13: Magic Items
Amulets of mighty fists costs half again as much as a magical weapon does, and can be enhanced just like a weapon can.
Amulets of Natural Armor, Cloaks of Resistance, and Rings of Protection are banned.
When creating items, all requirements must be met, and cannot be ignored for a +5 DC, plus the DC to
create an item is it's caster level +10, and it must be met with the relevant skill besides spellcraft, with
the exception of scrolls, and wondrous items.
When adding properties to an item, it must be from an item of the same slot.
Piece of Advice: Put these in a Google Docs file then link to it.
At first glance they seem a bit odd... I can give you more after a bit.
Umm Wow...
Question... Why so many changes?
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For those wondering, "Peach" means "Please Examine and Critique Honestly". Which I thoroughly plan to do.
Ability generation:
Quite clunky and will have really weird results. If you want to enforce "fairness" with rolling dice, use the 27-25-23 system, where you roll 4d6, drop the lowest, and that's your first score. You then subtract that from 27 to get your second score, and roll again for the 3rd one. Then subtract the 3rd score from 25 to get the 4th, and then roll for the 5th one and subtract that from 23 to get the 6th. If the computed score (2nd, 4th, or 6th) is greater than 18, reduce it to 18 and put the excess in it's paired score.
Then add racial bonuses and maybe a free +2.
Starting Wealth:
Don't do this unless you are drastically changing encounters. The wealth by level guidelines are one of the most fundamental assumptions about the game. You mess with them, you're going to have a lot of work on your hands.
Monk AC: don't do this. They're already AC starved.
Smite Evil: Lame.
Magus Spellstrike: Don't do this. Really, Do Not Do This. This is meant to be one of their primary class abilities and you are nerfing it to nigh uselessness.
Iterative Attacks: Erm, ok...make martials much less useful...
Parry: Ok, interesting idea, but it'll slow down combat a lot
Magic Items:
What are you doing to replace the items you banned? You cannot just ban them without making drastic changes to the way monsters work, as the game assumes their use. As in, the existence of those items are built into the assumptions this game makes to make a fair experience.
If you want honesty, these are not well thought out house rules. They're a hodgepodge of nerfs that mess with some of the fundamental assumptions of the game and will just force you to spend a massive amount of time redoing every single encounter in Skull and Shackles to nerf them back down to a level where it's even reasonably fair to your players. They reek of reactionary nerfs and on top of that, do not fix any of the real issues in PF. The fact that they all seem reactionary means I would not play at such a table, since the probability is high that if I do anything effective, it'll be nerfed.
If I understand correctly, you have to total +7 modifier on ability scores, but you have advantages and disadvantages that don't affect ability scores. The method for using this is unclear in the text until you put in in context later. I would list your advantages/disadvantages separately in the areas they're applicable.
What's the reasoning behind the "no favored class" and then "Half-Elves get a favored Class"? Multitalented?
Iterative Attacks: Why? If you're trying to limit excess rolls, you could easily remove iterative attacks, allowing them only from feats, and grant the players a modifier to damage = 1/2 character level (Star Wars Saga does this).
I like the parry maneuver, but it will slow down combat as Cheapy says. When using an immediate action, they can only effectively parry 1 time every other round. This is spiffy.
Magic Items: I removed the amulet of natural armor and all ability increase items from my game. Again, like Cheapy said, you have to compensate for that or an imbalance will occur.
Why does the AoMF costs half of that of an equivalent weapon when it normally costs more? I can see making it cost roughly the same, as that's what I do, just curious.
Overall, I have to agree with what Cheapy said.
I'm with cheapy on this one. There's a lot of changes, that will require you to change the way the game works - some nerfs to classes that don't need them, some completely unneeded rules (why house rule Weapon Mastery in a campaign that doesn't go to level 20?) and some rules that just... don't make sense. Why the change to XP gained/required?
I think it would be easier to do this if you fixed the formatting, and provided your reasons for changing the rules. I often houserule heavily, but you have to be careful not to let unnecessary changes in. When I house rule this is what I do:
1. Establish what the problem is, as clearly to myself as possible.
2. Look if there are ways to fix this within the rules.
3. Start working on a solution to the issues, coming up with an idea and designing the house rule.
4. Comparing the rule to the problem as stated in point 1.
5. Do a few theoretical playtests of it.
5b. If I'm unsure on it, confront the forum.
6. Test it out in game.
6b. If it works well enough that I think others might have use of it, confront the forum.
We need to see point 1 and preferably the results of point 5 to help you.
EDIT: House rules 6 and 9 are good though. I can't see how those would make anything worse (and I've actually used something akin to your saves rule with great effect).
Da'ath: It says "half again". I think this means (though English isn't my main language) that it costs as a weapon plus half that amount. So a +1 AoMF costs 3000 gp.
Piece of Advice: Put these in a Google Docs file then link to it.
At first glance they seem a bit odd... I can give you more after a bit.
Umm Wow...
Question... Why so many changes?
Well, these have accumulated over many years of gaming, this is the first time I posted my house rules on the forums, one of the things i hope to do is eliminate a lot of them.
So your input on any of them will be useful.
To Cheapy's post
Ability generation:
Quite clunky and will have really weird results. If you want to enforce "fairness" with rolling dice, use the 27-25-23 system, where you roll 4d6, drop the lowest, and that's your first score. You then subtract that from 27 to get your second score, and roll again for the 3rd one. Then subtract the 3rd score from 25 to get the 4th, and then roll for the 5th one and subtract that from 23 to get the 6th. If the computed score (2nd, 4th, or 6th) is greater than 18, reduce it to 18 and put the excess in it's paired score.
Then add racial bonuses and maybe a free +2.
I have looked all over the internet for people method of determing ability scores, and i don't think i have heard of that one.
I read one guy had people roll three times and then flip the dice over, but nothing like that.
I prefer my players to roll, as it gets them away from min maxing, and forces them to play the cards they're dealt, what i don't like about rolling is that it has a wide power range, someone could roll commoner stats, while another rolls significantly higher, putting him on par with things several CRs higher then him.
I chose my method, because they must still deal with the rolls they got but now they're more on equal terms, as well as not having stats too high or too low.
Starting Wealth
Because my players are crazy. LoL. They like it rough, i might change this to half PC wealth though.
One of the reasons is because of the amount of +5 AC items they could get arounf 15th level.
Besides this rule will only see play when characters are made past 1st level.
One easy way to get a middle ground between randomness of dice roll and the fairness of point buy is the cards method. Take a standard deck of cards, pick out cards 4-9 each of spades and hearts - in total 12 cards. Each player shuffles them and puts them in six piles of two cards, then flips them over. That's your scores.
As far as i know from my current kingmaker campaign, Smite Evil is Easy mode for most if not all bosses, making potentially exciting and challenging encounters pretty anti-climactic, i wanted to change it back into a single attack as it was back in 3.5, and retain the damage boost the paladins need.
As for the monk AC, i'll change it back
Spellstrike, one my player's idea, the one playing the magus, i could change it back.
Iterative attacks, not a rule to make martials less useful, i do want them to keep their damage, i did this one to speed up higher level gameplay.
The change from Saga edition sounds like a good idea, im just worried what it will do to their damage output, and other mechanics that rely on iterative attacks.
One easy way to get a middle ground between randomness of dice roll and the fairness of point buy is the cards method. Take a standard deck of cards, pick out cards 4-9 each of spades and hearts - in total 12 cards. Each player shuffles them and puts them in six piles of two cards, then flips them over. That's your scores.
Never heard of it, love it, thank you.
Parry
my players love it, they can't tell it's slowing combat down since it keeps them involved even when it's not their turn.
I will talk to them about it though see what they really think, but so far it seems positive.
Magic items, I plan on using my shiny new ultimate equipment book to generate the items for that game, those particular items will get replaced by items of similar value, although the items are gone those bonuses are not, they will need to work harder to get them.
Again my players are crazy, it was their idea.
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Parry
my players love it, they can't tell it's slowing combat down since it keeps them involved even when it's not their turn.
I will talk to them about it though see what they really think, but so far it seems positive.Magic items, I plan on using my shiny new ultimate equipment book to generate the items for that game, those particular items will get replaced by items of similar value, although the items are gone those bonuses are not, they will need to work harder to get them.
Again my players are crazy, it was their idea.
I respect a GM who takes into account what his players want. I've seen far too many with a "my way or the highway" approach. Don't get me wrong, I firmly support that the "GM is the final arbiter," but player feedback is essential for a fun game (in my opinion).
As for the parry rules, I kinda like them added in as a combat maneuver. If I might ask, what was your inspiration for the rules in a mechanical sense?
As for the parry rules, I kinda like them added in as a combat maneuver. If I might ask, what was your inspiration for the rules in a mechanical sense?
The duelist's class feature mainly, i tweaked it around a little to make it simpler, resolve quicker, and easier to use. Plus I felt it was weird that the duelists had an ability everybody assumed everybody was doing all the time.
What's the reasoning behind the "no favored class" and then "Half-Elves get a favored Class"? Multitalented?
It felt like another odd little bonus tacked on, like traits, that don't feel like they're required. We would constantly lave to remind ourselves, to not forget our favored class bonus, and what the bonus applied to. Half-elves keep it because of their racial trait.
Iterative Attacks: Why? If you're trying to limit excess rolls, you could easily remove iterative attacks, allowing them only from feats, and grant the players a modifier to damage = 1/2 character level (Star Wars Saga does this).
I would like to know further how to work around this in pathfinder, and if i do what it would conflict with.
Thanks for the explanations. I need to dust off my core rule book for Star Wars Saga Edition so I get the mechanics right. I'll post it when she falls asleep (my daughter) or this evening, whichever comes first.=)
Why the change to XP gained/required?
Those XP numbers can get crazy, I have worked out the math and if an encounter is as challenging as written, it would give around the same amount of experience.
Plus the players don't need to reference the book every time they level to see how much XP they need to level, and at the end of each session i give each participant an updated XP total, so they're is no math involved on their part either.I agree that it is unnecessary, the XP rules work fine as written, but so far my players love the change.
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Given the removal of XP costs, you could just skip XP calculations entirely and tell the players when they level. That's what one of my GMs does.
Parry is interesting, but it can get time-consuming, and I see it as extra valuable to characters who don't already have swift actions to take; they're not really giving anything up to try the parry, while someone with swift actions is.
With computer aid, a random point buy is another stat generation method; one GM I have uses that; someone wrote up a quick program that generated two stat arrays randomly, with the same point buy (actually he used a small range, so it was 2 point buys within 28-32 point, 3.5-style, I think), and we could choose our array from those two. It has the same benefit of preventing the player min-maxing the stat array, without letting the spread get too out of line between players. The cards method sounds much easier (unless you're loaded down with programmers).
The change from Saga edition sounds like a good idea, im just worried what it will do to their damage output, and other mechanics that rely on iterative attacks.
I sent you a message with the information. It's not OGL, so don't want to post it here.
I sent you a message with the information. It's not OGL, so don't want to post it here.
The change from Saga edition sounds like a good idea, im just worried what it will do to their damage output, and other mechanics that rely on iterative attacks.
Thanks for your time, ill consider it, the extra feat tax they may not like but it it probably would make things a hair more challenging for them.
Thanks for your time, ill consider it, the extra feat tax they may not like but it it probably would make things a hair more challenging for them.I sent you a message with the information. It's not OGL, so don't want to post it here.
The change from Saga edition sounds like a good idea, im just worried what it will do to their damage output, and other mechanics that rely on iterative attacks.
Yeah, in essence, the dual wield master grants extra attacks for the guys with 2 weapons, while those wielding 1 weapon get their benefits from double and triple strike. It was an interesting system and most of my players actually went the single weapon method.
I generally agree that there are too many rules.
On the smite rules, you would be better served by defining what is detectable and smiteable evil in your gameworld.
I don't like the "No exceptions" thing with magic items. By allowing craftsmen to create magic items you open up a lot of adventure seeds.
May I recommend my "One named magic item per craftsman" rule? You cannot talk the local herbalist into making potions of invisibility because they already committed to potions of restoration.