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I've noticed a lot of visitors to my house rules page since I posted it in this thread.
I can never get enough feedback, so I thought I'd create a single page for general feedback on my stuff.
Here's the google doc.
Let me know what you're thinking!
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Individual Discussion Threads:
Thanks! Wow!
I have to give due credit to the forum on this one. Usually when I start with a rule, it is anything but elegant. I post it up here and people help me smooth the lumps out.
Let's have some fun! Is there anything you guys would like to see me give the house rule treatment? What am I missing from the rules above?
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Lots of comments, E.L.
What I mean is, you get each increase once between 2nd and 5th levels. Why not keep the stats in at each 4th level (effectively making them "locked in"), but let players shuffle around the other three benefits as they choose for levels 2, 3, and 5? A barbarian may prefer a weapon bonus before an armor bonus, and someone who rarely uses weapons or shields (full arcane casters) has no use for the third level benefit.
Hell, in 3.5 I had a Cleric who used the exact same mace from level 1 to level 23. I had artifact-level armor, abilities not covered in any book, the ability to True Resurrection one a day for free (no GP or XP cost), and in my weapon slot it said "Mace, Heavy". No masterwork or anything. It's not really game-breaking if they get the saves earlier than the armor anyway - someone who wanted the bonus to saves more than the bonus to AC at that low a level would likely get the cloak before the AC boost anyway.
The Battle Adaption line is great. I'm surprised it's not Fighter-only, though. They need the love and it fits that class better than others. No INT pre-req was a smart move.
Heighten Spell is meh. It buffs casters overall, something that did not need to happen. I do like the basic idea of letting a spell stored in a higher slot count as a higher DC, but I would have it just be a base ability.
...I suppose as it is now, no one uses heighten. So I suppose it was a good choice if it means people take it.
Not much to say on Leadership. It's a good way to do it, and there are others. If it works for your group, go for it.
Projected Channeling is fine. Definitely not broken, and gives some options that were probably needed. Not much experience with channel energy in my game.
With Ride-By Attack, I thought that was the way it always worked. Instant houserule!
With Wealthy - I already said how I feel about the wealth system. Without game experience with it, I can't just the potency of the feat.
That's all I really have to say. Look forward to the replies.
Excellent work, by the way. They all seem well thought out - even wealth, though I hate what it does - and certain don't break the game in any way.
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Overall, I like the changes you have made.
Policies
Your two policies, "Roleplay to Respec" and "No Stepping Stones" are brilliant. I've used both policies at times, but never written them out when creating campaign documents. (I always publish a document something like yours when I begin a campaign, containing an introduction, character creation guidelines, and any house rules I intend to use.)
Abstract Wealth
Like TheRedArmy, the only one I would be hesitant about using is Abstract Wealth, and I see that you only implement that in one campaign. I'd love to read your assessment of how it's been working out.
Battle Adaptation
I also love the Battle Adaptation chain of feats! I would only use it with experienced players, but I would definitely offer it then.
A Suggestion
In keeping with some of the themes I see in your house rules, and combined with your rules for level-based bonuses, I'd actually add one more feat for the fighter types.
Exotic Weapon Mastery (combat)
Prerequisites: Proficiency with martial weapons and at least one exotic weapon.You are adept with using any weapon, no matter how strange or unfamiliar.
Benefit: You are proficient with all exotic weapons.
That's a rough draft, and I'd consider making it a little more powerful by lowering the prerequisites, or a little less powerful by requiring an hour of practice to swap between exotic weapons. The general idea, however, would be to enable weapon-switching warriors in a rule set that normally encourages specialization.
Whoah! Okay, point by point.
Scenes and Acts: Right you are that computing search time is not that difficult. The real value in scenes and acts is spell durations. With scene and acts, it becomes very easy for players to make decisions about their speed through the site, and the GM doesn't need to make fuzzy decisions about expiry. Also, spells tend to expire together at the end of a scene. So, managing searching and exploration was only one small part of what I was going for.
Abstract Wealth: This is probably the newest, least-tested rule. It's also only being used in one campaign, and that campaign (legacy of fire) is a weird one as far as money matters are concerned. I have gotten a lot of good feedback on it recently from the forums, but I haven't incorporated it yet.
If your mirror scenario occurred at my table, and all the players rolled 1s on their purchase check (statistically improbable) then it would simply mean that nobody had a mirror they were willing to sell. You could then make a diplomacy check or some other thing to simply borrow one. But it's worth pointing out that every party member rolling a 1 probably won't happen.
Enhancement Bonuses: Why this path? Like so many of these rules, I'm trying to address the complaints of one particular player who hates certain things about Pathfinder. Generic bonuses are one of those things. At the same time, I have no inclination to re-write every statblock in the game, so I needed a rule that just glosses over the missing bonuses and keeps everything more or less at baseline for CR. There are other approaches to this on the forums, but they are rather involved from the player end of things, making choices and customizing things. This was meant to be the lazy GM's approach.
Feats: These are pretty piecemeal, they've evolved over many sessions. Ambidexterity replaces the normal TWF feats with a single feat. If someone wants their character to wave a torch around in their off-hand as a weapon, I don't think they should roll at -8 just because a rogue can use that rule for sneak attacks. So I put the burden on the characters who benefit (people with bonus damage) and let characters with no bonus damage just do it.
Heighten spell is just a personal preference thing. If a sorcerer blows a 2nd level slot on a first level spell, my group lets them have the 2nd level DC. This feat exists so that I don't have to swap out Heightened spells as they appear in AP statblocks.
Yeah, did you know you need Ride-By attack if your mount has 5 foot reach and you want to attack with a lance in the same turn as your mount? True.
Battle Adaptation: Fighters aren't a bad class. They definitely benefit more than anyone from battle adaptation, since they can start more chains than anyone else. But in my groups, anyone who takes combat feats takes these feats. Consider the poor bard, who is completely feat starved, or the rogue? Do these characters not deserve some fraction of the versatility that the fighter gets, which is itself a fraction of what a wizard gets?
Hit points: The Strain-Injury Variant is my crowning achievement. We don't even realize we're using it at my table anymore. It makes our games so much better, it solves the 15 minute workday, it makes combats more dramatic. It even makes wands and post-combat healing more fun, because it is more rare but still important. And other people use it a lot too, easily the most popular thing I've made.
Cling: You got me. Shadow of Colossus all the way. I consider it one of the major flaws of Pathfinder RPG that it is basically a game about slaying monsters and it doesn't support this trope. Not only does it not support it, it willfully supports silliness like medium grappling huge. This rule makes the high level campaign rock and has produced some of the most enjoyable fights ever. Dragon fights are the best when they can stay in the air as the martial characters hang on for dear life.
Thank you so much for your detailed feedback. Getting other people's opinions and getting out of my own head is exactly what makes these rules a success, IMO.
Policies
Your two policies, "Roleplay to Respec" and "No Stepping Stones" are brilliant. I've used both policies at times, but never written them out when creating campaign documents. (I always publish a document something like yours when I begin a campaign, containing an introduction, character creation guidelines, and any house rules I intend to use.)
Thanks! Yeah, I have yet to re-examine things in light of The Ultimate Campaign's retraining rules, but I suspect my players will adopt them and self-police. That's what happens already... they're allowed to skip dumb pre-reqs, but most of my players just go by the book anyway. It makes them feel better. I do it too, when I play. Weird, huh?
I highly recommend a policy section. I tried writing those two things up as rules, but it was clumsy and took up a ton of space, listing what feats were waived and whatnot.
Abstract Wealth
Like TheRedArmy, the only one I would be hesitant about using is Abstract Wealth, and I see that you only implement that in one campaign. I'd love to read your assessment of how it's been working out.
Abstract Wealth is a weird rule, and I'm not at all surprised that people see it as the odd duck here. It may well prove to be a failed experiment.
In my Legacy of Fire Campaign, not only are the PCs all wealthy princes, but the arc of that campaign leads them from the biggest shopping destination in the world (Katapesh) to two full books (4 adventures!) with no shopping whatsoever. As a result, the Wealth rules are meeting my needs (loading them up preposterously in Katapesh), but those aren't easily generalized to most campaigns.
I think the rule is suffering from a lack of proper playtesting. But, I put my living campaigns over house rules. It's definitely not appropriate for all campaigns, but at a certain point my crew just gets bored of GP math.
Battle Adaptation
I also love the Battle Adaptation chain of feats! I would only use it with experienced players, but I would definitely offer it then.
Everyone at my table takes these feats. They're "too good" except for the fact that no one character with the feat is "better" than one without it. If someone forgets to take the feat, but they're eligible, I just assume they have it. Then when they complain about their feat choice, I say "wasn't that your battle adaptation, nudge nudge".
Good lord it makes the game so much more playable. Especially for specialists like Mounted Combat folks, who can now at least shuffle things around a bit when they know no mounted combat is in the offing.
A Suggestion
In keeping with some of the themes I see in your house rules, and combined with your rules for level-based bonuses, I'd actually add one more feat for the fighter types.That's a rough draft, and I'd consider making it a little more powerful by lowering the prerequisites, or a little less powerful by requiring an hour of practice to swap between exotic weapons. The general idea, however, would be to enable weapon-switching warriors in a rule set that normally encourages specialization.Exotic Weapon Mastery (combat)
Prerequisites: Proficiency with martial weapons and at least one exotic weapon.You are adept with using any weapon, no matter how strange or unfamiliar.
Benefit: You are proficient with all exotic weapons.
I like that a lot! Two feats is enough to pay, I think.
Yeah, you must have noticed that we're not very patient with feats in my crew. We like feats, but for a long time we didn't get to play very much, so it was annoying to have to wait to try out more mechanics. Life's too short to get locked into poor choices. Flexibility and experimentation really round out the role-play opportunities for martial classes.
Thanks for the discussion! I'm honored to receive such detailed feedback.
I stumbled across this thread as I've been admiring your Strain-Injury HP Variant from afar from quite some time, and was curious as to what else you'd set your mind to houserule-wise.
Abstract Wealth
I'm really, really interested to hear how this one turns out. I'm not sure if I'd use it for my next campaign (Reign of Winter), and I'm unsure if the players would accept it, but I really like the idea of turning the discussion time of "Do we have enough gold for X+Y+Z or any permutations thereof" into more RP time that I can use for the players browsing markets and getting a feel for the villages/towns/cities they're in.
Automatic Enhancement Bonuses
I like this one, though I'm still unsure about the two options available for stat gains. I'll talk with my players as to what sort of progression they want.
Additionally, when you say "+1 bonus to armor if worn", what counts as armor? Specifically, can Monks/Wizards/Sorcerers benefit from this, and what would they need to wear to do so?
Strain-Injury Hit Point Variant
I am 100% going to use this.
Other
I notice you say that in the appendix you're no longer using the balanced attacks from Trailblazer. Did you offer it as an option to players? I'm finding that in higher-level play the number of attacks starts to wear at the cohesiveness of the description I'm able to offer. My players are very helpful with having their attacks all calculated by the time I get to them - which keeps combat ratcheting onwards at a decent pace - but it drains some of the excitement out of the proceedings as strings of numbers are listed off. Thusly, I've been considering implementing that rule for my next campaign to replace the standard Pathfinder rules for gaining iterative attacks.
I LOVE balanced attacks from Trailblazer and the day may come where I make it mandatory for high level games.
It was offered to my players as an option, and they used it a bit. But, we all have this weird tendency to stick to the RAW wherever possible, even if house rules allow otherwise. My players are the least abuse-prone players in the world, I am certain.
As a result, my house rules doc contained someone else's rule that nobody was using, so I dropped it.
Abstract Wealth
I'm really, really interested to hear how this one turns out. I'm not sure if I'd use it for my next campaign (Reign of Winter), and I'm unsure if the players would accept it, but I really like the idea of turning the discussion time of "Do we have enough gold for X+Y+Z or any permutations thereof" into more RP time that I can use for the players browsing markets and getting a feel for the villages/towns/cities they're in.
Oh good, I'm glad somebody's into this rule! :)
It's still relatively new, and as I mentioned upthread, it only gets played in one weird campaign. I'm excited by the prospect of someone else trying it out, that would go a long way toward fixing/expanding it.
Oh good, I'm glad somebody's into this rule! :)
It's still relatively new, and as I mentioned upthread, it only gets played in one weird campaign. I'm excited by the prospect of someone else trying it out, that would go a long way toward fixing/expanding it.
I re-read the rule a few times, and I think I'm a bit more pleased with it now. Took me a while to click the "wealth level vs purchase DC" score element of it, but I like it now that I fully understand it (I think).
My only reticence to using it for my next campaign is that I'm going to be running Reign of Winter, and I'm unsure if it would fit that AP's tone or not. We'll see.
My only reticence to using it for my next campaign is that I'm going to be running Reign of Winter, and I'm unsure if it would fit that AP's tone or not. We'll see.
Most of my rules are built specifically for running with APs. Abstract wealth is not. :(
However, the ratings are fixed to settlement sizes on the main table. I imagined that would be the main limitation on item availability (other than wealth rating itself). APs generally work on the same assumption—at least the ones I've played.
Love the hit point variant and clinging rules. Borrowed. Thanks!
Love the hit point variant and clinging rules. Borrowed. Thanks!
The Strain HP variant has a huge discussion thread (linked in the second post of this thread).
Please stop in with playtest reports if you can!