You are only allowed ONE Houserule... choose wisely.


Homebrew and House Rules

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Long-range teleportation and scrying effects require that you have personally experienced the area, either through your own senses or those of others, or have an arcane mark there.

No scry-n-fry, and not every notable location in the world must be protected with a teleportation interdiction field. Helps me tell stories! I am glad for this rule almost every single session with a 14th level party.


EvilTwinSkippy wrote:

A simple one, but it comes up every session: Diagonals.

Movement, ranged, and reach attacks moving though diagonal squares are treated as 5' per square, regardless of the number of squares traversed. Area of effect templates remain the same.

Life is so much easier without the triangle inequality.

Just remember that the Pythgorean Theorem goes from

Hypotenuse=(x^2+y^2)^1/2

to

Hypotenuse=max(x, y)

Grand Lodge

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Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
DungeonmasterCal wrote:
I have thrown out CMB/CMD and just made the combat maneuvers part of the regular attack and damage sequence. Saves time and makes things flow faster.

I am intrigued by this decision and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.


TriOmegaZero wrote:
DungeonmasterCal wrote:
I have thrown out CMB/CMD and just made the combat maneuvers part of the regular attack and damage sequence. Saves time and makes things flow faster.
I am intrigued by this decision and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

It's just based on a trick we did back in 1e and then 2e. If someone wanted to do something not covered in the rules, we winged it. If worked, we wrote it down. If someone wanted to tackle their opponent (grapple) it was a To-Hit Roll with a +2 for using both arms. This is sort of reflected in making the grapple check a touch attack in Pathfinder. Feats like Improved Unarmed Combat and the like still come into play, too. If the grapple succeeds, the next round the victim gets to make a roll vs. the successful number that "grappled" him using his STR, DEX, or Escape Artist number, whichever is better. It's not perfect, but it does seem to work for our group.


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Your character must join the party and cooperate to move the adventure forward. That doesn't mean you have to get along with all the other characters and it doesn't even mean that you can't be evil but you came to my house (I am married to the DM) to play Dungeons and Dragons not to be cajoled into playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Back in the day when our group was playing RIFTS, we had a player write up a character that did not want to join the party or cooperate with the group. He basically expected the GM to run a game for the group and then run a separate game for him while the group spent god knows how long convincing this character that we were worthy of his company. Husband said "Fine, you don't join the party. What's your next character? If it doesn't want to join the party, keep writing up characters until you get to one that wants to be a part of the group."

Since then, we don't spend any time introducing characters or figuring out how to get new characters into the party. It is hand-waved to the point that it is sometimes comical: Dave gets separated from the party for whatever reason, dies a horrible, lonely death and the party only finds out he died because that player's next character walks up and says "Hi, I'm Bob, your new group member, so sorry about Dave's tragic ending". LOL


Removal of instant win spells and abilities. The "save or die" or the "i ask a deity or cast a spell to show me where/what the mcgruffin is so we can bypass the whole campaign" type of spells.


At first level, PCs get a number of hp equal to total Con score. Your Con is 9, you get 9 hp. Your Con is 17, you get 17 hp. (+ favored class and feats and stuff, but not Con modifier.)

OR

Evil Lincoln's Strain/Injury hp variant. (Probably this one.)


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Redneckdevil wrote:
Removal of instant win spells and abilities. The "save or die" or the "i ask a deity or cast a spell to show me where/what the mcgruffin is so we can bypass the whole campaign" type of spells.

How on earth is anyone supposed to feel powerful with such a house rule in place?

Grand Lodge

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Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
Ravingdork wrote:
How on earth is anyone supposed to feel powerful with such a house rule in place?

By beating things to death with 3 feet of steel.

Sovereign Court

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Everybody is doing PFS rules... my favorite is still from Nuke War the card game... if you have all three sets when you fire a Scud missile, point left or right, roll the die and count that direction to see who you hit. Why this isn't in the rules to begin with is beyond me.


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Hmmm, just one house rule eh?

I think I've got to say 'no encumbrance' is at the top of my list. I can deal with evil characters, and guns, and synthesist summoners and whatnot, but encumbrance is just horrifying, and quite-simply something I don't want to have to deal with.

...Especially when players who can't even manage simple addition without relying on calculators come into the picture.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
TriOmegaZero wrote:
Ravingdork wrote:
How on earth is anyone supposed to feel powerful with such a house rule in place?
By beating things to death with 3 feet of steel.

I'm sure that works great against a demon with teleport at will and the ability to continuously bombard you with fireballs from 1,000+ feet away.


Ravingdork wrote:
TriOmegaZero wrote:
Ravingdork wrote:
How on earth is anyone supposed to feel powerful with such a house rule in place?
By beating things to death with 3 feet of steel.
I'm sure that works great against a demon with teleport at will and the ability to continuously bombard you with fireballs from 1,000+ feet away.

And this is what comes of fiddling about with rogue talents instead of banning demons with teleport at will and the ability continuously bombard you with fireballs from 1,000+ feet away.


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Does using a completely different system count as one house rule?

Shadow Lodge

Ravingdork wrote:
I'm sure that works great against a demon with teleport at will and the ability to continuously bombard you with fireballs from 1,000+ feet away.

I like how you went from "things" to "demons with teleport at will".

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Umbral Reaver wrote:
Does using a completely different system count as one house rule?

Nope, it means you wind up sharing the Ban Box with me. :)

I got cookies.


Only one house rule?
Hmmm...
If the rules get in the way of fun... Fun wins.


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Whenever I roll a d20 the result of the roll is a 20.


I have one, that while not perfect, fixes a lot of problems

Spoiler:
We are playing 4e


I'm just going to take all of my house rules and replace all periods with ", and", and call it one house rule with a lot of clauses:D

More seriously, the first change I make would probably be implementing my skill system.
Of course, a lot of my favorite house rules only make sense in conjunction with other house rules, or work best together. I'd say a pretty important one by itself would be "make full attack a standard action, and some or all of the attacks can be replaced by combat maneuvers as the attacker sees fit," but that arguably counts as two house rules.

My other house rules that I consider to be as important (or more important) only make a significant difference together. Which, of course, makes questions like these hard (which is the point of the thread, of course:) ).


All characters that meet the prerequisites get power attack, deadly aim and combat expertise for free.


Ellis Mirari wrote:

For the purposes of this thread, "houserule" is defined as "altering an existing feature of the game for any reason". Excluding things (like, say, the Samurai and Ninja classes) don't count.

Me: Firearms Houserule—attacks against flat-footed AC instead of touch at close range and take twice as long to reload, but cost 5% price. Simple weapon.

I love the style of old-fashioned guns, but I want to make them fit a world where they're common, not where they're practically magic items by default. With the above rule, they're less powerful than a compound bow, but easier to use (which matches the history as close as I think it can).

Cause and effect applies !


I, like Pandora, limit Teleportation spells and abilities in much the same way.

I would also add that, as per our Houserules, teleportation isn't possible onto/into or off of/out of moving objects (ships, airships, wagons, coaches, dragons' backs, floating islands in the sky, etc.) or through living things. For example, the use of Ivy covering the walls of a mansion to to defeat an assassin's attempts to teleport into the place.

Teleportation may be fun for some, but it can absolutely wreck storylines.

Grand Lodge

E6

Grand Lodge

Excaliburproxy wrote:
EvilTwinSkippy wrote:

A simple one, but it comes up every session: Diagonals.

Movement, ranged, and reach attacks moving though diagonal squares are treated as 5' per square, regardless of the number of squares traversed. Area of effect templates remain the same.

Life is so much easier without the triangle inequality.

Just remember that the Pythgorean Theorem goes from

Hypotenuse=(x^2+y^2)^1/2

to

Hypotenuse=max(x, y)

Yep, I won't argue the math, only that it bogs down combat and makes any strategy w/ reach weapons relatively worthless. From what I've seen, most GMs ignore it anyways.


Ravingdork wrote:
Redneckdevil wrote:
Removal of instant win spells and abilities. The "save or die" or the "i ask a deity or cast a spell to show me where/what the mcgruffin is so we can bypass the whole campaign" type of spells.
How on earth is anyone supposed to feel powerful with such a house rule in place?

By rolling lots of dice :-) its one of my biggest house rules. Reason is i play whatever the pcs can do, npcs can do as well. I dont want my players or bbeg dying all because they rolled bad 1 time. Also as far the other part, i have had an exciting campaign i spent alot of time on (estimating weeks of playtime) ruined because of a divination spell. I just view them as easy way out spells that can easily backfire on players/npcs alike so i just houseruled them away.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

What kind of demon has fireball at will anyway?


No corebook material allowed! That's where most problems seem to arise!

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