Everything is just house rules.What is Amber Diceless houserules of? World of Darkness? Shadowrun?
It's the house rules of whomever wrote the system.
If I write a game system, and playtest it with friends and then publish it, it's my house rules that I am selling. Considering now I can do this on Amazon without the big cash layout for printing, everyone can now publish their house rules.
Everything is just house rules.What is Amber Diceless houserules of? World of Darkness? Shadowrun?It's the house rules of whomever wrote the system.
If I write a game system, and playtest it with friends and then publish it, it's my house rules that I am selling. Considering now I can do this on Amazon without the big cash layout for printing, everyone can now publish their house rules.
Pretty sure an innovative new game isn't a houserule in the same way pathfinder is a set of houserules for 3.5.
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Instead of repeating, with less eloquence, that which Howie23 posted with such clarity, I'll take a different tack.
When we learn stuff, our understanding changes from what it used to be before we understood. Obvious, yes, but although our understanding changed at that point in time, we don't always remember why we now know what we know! We can't always tell you exactly how we know something, because that isn't the important part; only the knowledge itself is important to most of us most of the time.
So, for those that played 3.5 extensively, when a rule was ambiguous or badly understood there came a time when we gained an understanding, whether through Sage Advice or (the excellent) Rules Compendium or the Magic Item Compendium or whatever. Without needing to remember exactly why, we now understand that you can Sunder on any attack during a full attack, what 'attack action' actually means, that all attacks in a Pounce get the +2 bonus from charging, etc. etc.
These things were explained. We understood.
Even now, if we have a rules question we can use those sources if we want to understand a rule, on the principle that PF is the same as 3.5.....except where they (deliberately) changed it!
But those people who didn't go through that edition have no history of trusting those sources! To them, it's a completely different game!
Those people are losing out.
Some of the very questions being asked by PF players were asked, and answered, in 3.5. If a rule didn't change, then the 3.5 answer is good for PF...unless the devs decide to change it!
So 3.5 is a valuable resource.
I love Pathfinder. Many things are better than they were in 3.5. But some things are worse. Leaving aside the obvious 'personal taste' issue, some very basic d20 rules engine stuff was left out in the cut&paste process. Whether by error, for copyright reasons, word count issues or for other obscure reasons, PF is a worse game than it could be because of these omissions. Diagonal reach is the poster...
Here, here! From the first line about Howie23's post, on down. Well said, both of you.
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I think you can take this even further. I started playing DnD with 3.0 and fell in love with the game. Ino i feel anyone who truly loves a game should at least play it's predecessor to gain not only an understanding of how the game came to be the way it is but a also a respect. So my friend's and I played a few campaigns of ADnD and even the original Dnd. When we did this we gained a better understanding of why certain rules have the limitation that they do and why some rules where added. You start to see its broken beginnings as it flows into something more.
I have only very recently started playing pathfinder so yes my understanding of the rules come fom 3.0/3.5. At least once a game at my weekly society meetings i try to do something that was normal in 3.5 but has now been changed. I was a builder of broken characters, spending days building a character. In some ways i love what pathfinder has done, they fixed alot of balancing issues but i will always revert back to 3.0/3.5 when i find myself with a question of mechanics and how rules should work because thats what i learned first.
I highly recommend anybody who has only played pathfinder to find a group of 3.0/3.5 players and play a campaign. You will gain a better understanding of rules, and imo a better appreciation for the game. And if you can get ahold of some ADnD books at least read through them, even better try and get some people to play. And if you come across some 4.0 stuff... burn it, it's garbage :-)