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When he complains about that, just say 'I know. This is the house rule I am making. If you have an actual legitimate complaint, I'm willing to listen. But if all you have is 'it's new, therefore it sucks', then we're done'.
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Based on the houserules you posted (adding random die rolls and charts for things that don't need them...especially fumble charts *shudders*), are you entirely certain the problem is "That's not in the book" and not "That's not in the book...and thank god it isn't can we please go by what's in the book because my god I hate that"?
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Yeah. Technically speaking, you don't need any justification for making any house rules you like -- the appropriate response to a rules lawyer objecting to a house rule is "Shut up, or leave."
However, most of the rules that you propose would (in my opinion) make the game substantially less fun. So I'd take the second option of the two.
I think your REAL problem is that you're making house rules that are neither adequately explained, nor adequately motivated, and you don't have buy-in from your group.
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I think the problem is that your player wants to play Pathfinder, and you are more interested in creating your own game. A lot of players like being able to plan out their characters and unexpected house rules often interfere with this. Nothing is more frustrating to a player than having his character constantly altered with no notice. Changing how survival works may not seem like a big deal to you. But if the player invested skill points in to it with the assumption that he would be able to do certain things it can be frustrating. The same is true with spell craft. The person who invested a lot of points in the skill with the assumption that he needed them to learn spells may feel ripped off when the guy with only one rank now learns spells just as quickly as he does.
House rules should for the most part cover things that are not covered by the rules, or that need clarification. They are also good for altering the campaign to create a specific setting or feel. In at all possible they should be stated before the campaign begins so the players are aware of them and can plan their characters accordingly.
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stuff in first post
I am a rules lawyer at times, but I also realize the GM has the last say. For the most part as long as there are no "surprise rules" I don't say much even if I disagree. If I do say something then I think the GM is really making an error or making things way to complicated similar to how you wanted 3 rolls to find and cook food. I would have voted against it also. Due to the game being an abstraction many things can be handwaved or not accounted for.
The spellbook rules are there for balancing reason, and it is just easier to use rules we already know. They can also take 10 on those checks so they should not be failing.
Fumble(especially fumble) and crit charts work against the players. I will admit I have used them in the past, but not anymore. The more times you attack the more you will likely have something bad happen with a fumble chart. It does not make sense to get better at fighting and have more an increasing chance at making an big error. Remember that while the player only rolls X number of attacks the character is actually making more than than so rolling more dice does not mean the character is always really making more attacks.
As for personal quest I have done them for RP reasons, but not for XP. RP moments can also grant XP, and you can have more random encounters. Both will cut down on you having to make personal quest.
I am not a player in your game but I would be saying "why are you making things overly complicated"?
If possible invite the other player here. If his problem is only that "it is not in the book", then I think he needs to lighten up. Every table I have sat at has house rules so he will have to get used to it.
It sounds like a lot of your homebrew is on a whim, and not thought out too well. You need a lot more experience with the actual rules before you start churning out reliably good homebrew.
Also, unless by warrior you mean "Monk" or had Improved Unarmed Strike, he would be dealing nonlethal damage which doesn't kill, it KOs. Even then it would be good etiquette to ask "Are you trying to kill the possessed child, or knock him out?".
As Orfamay said it is your right to tell him to deal with it or leave. I would leave if I were him. It sounds like he's expressing his disagreement as "It's not in the book" with the implication "for good reason".
Here's a tip though, even if you and that player split: Keep everyone at the same exp level. If players drift apart in levels, it will get harder to balance encounters for them. Plus it annoys me as a player, and I'm sure it annoys others as well to be out-leveled.
well, all your proposed changes scare me, so you know, there's that.
seriously though, the rules feel pedantic.
things are abstracted out for a reason, because they're boring to keep track of.
also, the child thing, if something did big bucks damage, yeah, i'd just swing at it too. if something feels like a threat, then yes, it will be acted upon as if it were a threat. that feels like a trap.
Also, unless by warrior you mean "Monk" or had Improved Unarmed Strike, he would be dealing nonlethal damage which doesn't kill, it KOs. Even then it would be good etiquette to ask "Are you trying to kill the possessed child, or knock him out?".
well, non-lethal damage on 1 HP, would easily instantly roll over into lethal damage... he could also be using a gauntlet.
Perhaps your player(s) do not like your house rules and are using the book to justify their dislike to you. That is different than 'it is not in the book so I don't like it'.
This game is at heart a co-operative game. If a significant portion of your group does not like how things are being run then perhaps you should examine what the group wants.
Frankly, from the house rules you have stated I would not want to play in your game. Most of them would make the game less fun.
BTW, the child thing? Your player would still have killed the child even if he used nonlethal damage since nonlethal damage becomes lethal damage after exceeding the maximum number of hitpoints (1 hitpoint) the creature has.
In short, the player could not have NOT killed the child. You put that player in an impossible situation.
Also, I do not think he is metagaming.
Joe the Fighter: "Holy crap this kid hits hard! It must not be a kid, it must be some kind of fiend! I bet it will be difficult to kill!"
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Urgh, fumble tables.
Houserules are fine, but you should always have a ready-to-go list of your houserules before the campaign begins which the players can look over and raise with you if there are issues. Coming up with suprise rules without player involvement is REALLY bad form and even I, as a GM who loves to hand-wave stuff and make up homebrew for my players, would get pretty angry at that.
In the end, you can wave around 'the DM is always right' as much as you want, but if you are creating interpersonal conflict chances are no-one is having much fun.
I think he says he talks to the players, but he is trying to get one player to agree with him more often. I don't think it will happen if he makes things more rules intensive though.
I can be a lawyer sometimes. My biggest thing is that I like consistency in the system. The rules more or less are all balanced against each other. You don't have to worry about weird interactions too much. But, it's a delicate balance. Once you start messing with that balance you have ripple effects. My mind is one where I need to understand things. So, if a rule creates a dissonance between two mechanics I'll start asking questions to both illustrate to the GM in a non confrontational way that says 'yo, you're changes also mess with x, y, and z' and to get a feel for how I should approach those situations and be able to spot them coming up. So, yes, it is about balance because there is an effort to balance the books.
I think part of is -- why, no, I'm not a psychoanalyst, why do you ask? -- the type of person who becomes a rule lawyer. In general, rule lawyers are people who like predictability and a certain amount of control. You learn all the rules so that you know what will happen, and aren't surprised beyond the normal randomness implicit in the dice. In a well-designed game, which I think Pathfinder is, the rules implicitly reflect a world that is both realistic enough to be immersive and exciting enough to be fun.
Changing the rules makes things less predictable.
Changing the rules is also more likely to make the world less fun than more fun, just because Paizo generally know what they're doing. (There's a reason they make a living designing games and I don't).
Some of the rules changes that the OP made also, IMHO, make the world that is less exciting/fun because they make routine tasks too time-consuming. Wilderness survival is rarely an issue in fantasy novels except when it's a specific threat -- think of how much time Frodo didn't spend worrying about how to cook what he had in his backpack and how long Faramir's apples would keep. The only real survival threats were, first, the magical snow attack, and second, simply running out of food as there wasn't enough lembas. As has already been pointed out, fumble rules tend just to be bad ideas, as they turn Conan the Cimmerian into Bozo the Clown. (Actually, the existence of fumble rules is a touchstone I use for an outright bad GM.)
And it sounds like the possessed-child was an example of outright deception on the part of the GM. A lot of players consider this kind of deception to be pick-up-the-dice-and-leave moments.
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As something of a rules lawyer (though I generally don't b&*!& about them too much) and a strong proponent and extensive user of House Rules, I obviously feel like using House Rules is entirely reasonable...though as others note the problem may well be the specific ones in question, not the concept in general. Most of the ones you list I wouldn't be overly enthused about, and I have over 8 pages of House Rules.
That said, if it's House Rules in general that are the issue, the best way to get someone with a liking for RAW to go with them is, frankly, to write them down making them explicit and clear. Indeed, I recommend this anyway for all House Rule users (hence the aforementioned 8 pages). Without written and explicit House Rules, the players are likely to make poor decisions based on rules they never even had the possibility to know, and that understandably annoys many players, most especially those who've gone to the effort to learn the rules just so as to avoid such mistakes. The possessed kid thing is an excellent example of this, and why adding things that don't have anything to do with the established rules can be a serious problem.
^
also, follow how the official rules are written as accurately as possible. They're written in a specific way to be clear and concise and make errors/contradictions more obvious.
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I tend to houserule a lot, but over the years I think I've gotten better at them.
Some of the things I learned;
1) Determine what exactly you want the rule to do. Then write it down. Then get someone else to read it to verify that your written rule actually does what you intend it to do. You'd be surprised of often other people just plain can't even understand what your written rule is supposed to be doing. Or they discover problems you never noticed.
2) Is the rule really necessary? Every game has some things that aren't perfect, but are they really important enough to change? Having many house rules makes the game harder, because you have to learn all the exceptions. Try to limit yourself to a "budget" of rules.
3) Consider carefully if the rule is fun for the person on the RECEIVING end. For example, Fumble rules. They may seem entertaining on paper, but they're NOT fun for someone who got Whirlwind because he thought it was a cool feat. Making more attack rolls means more chances to fumble. So more skilled warriors fumble more often.
4) Consider what the designers of the published rule intended. It's often good to know why things are as they are, rather than trying to change it first. I've actually removed a lot of my house rules because I discovered afterwards why the original rules were actually better. A typical example is fumble rules: people often houserule them in, but they were intentionally not put into PF because they don't work well with warriors that are supposed to be cool because they attack often.
5) Be careful with "realism". A 5th level character is basically at the peak of what normal realistic characters can do. At 10th level, Die Hard, Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon and Conan are all rather mundane, because PCs routinely do far more extreme things.
Case in point: your survival rules. After level 5 or so, mundane survival is a total non-issue. PCs can conjure food and drink with spells easily. Actually if you have a druid even at level 1 it's trivial to survive.
Try to use "cinematically appropriate" instead of "realistic" as a way of determining what should and shouldn't be possible.
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Wilderniss survival is an interesting case. If your campaign is about survivalism, then altering the rules to make it harder makes sense. But if your game is actually about dungeoncrawling, and the dungeon just happens to be in the wilderniss, don't make it harder.
If you have 4 hours to play on an evening, how many hours do you want to spend on gathering food? How many hours do the players want to spend on it?
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It's actually very easy. Open your Core Rulebook to Pg. 9. Show said person the paragraph, "The Most Important Rule."
Eat cookies because they're delicious.
See if he has anything else to say.
Discuss with your players why you have these house rules.
Become closer to your players as a GM.
Win all the brownies! (I mean cookies!)
It's actually very easy. Open your Core Rulebook to Pg. 9. Show said person the paragraph, "The Most Important Rule."
That won't get since he is trying to get to accept the rules as opposed to just be quiet about it.
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I'm infamous for house rules... 650 pages of them, in fact.
But I've never had a problem with them, because in our home game I always followed this procedure in implementing them:
1. I propose a rule and distribute the text in writing.
2. Any player can call for a discussion, during which the rule may be amended.
3. Any player can call for a vote on the new rule; I abstain except in the case of a tie. If it's voted down, it's gone.
Sometimes campaigns need special subset rules to convey the theme of an sdventure . Paizo introduces subset rules ideas for many ap for this reason.
However a lot of the time is isn't necessary it just makes a game unfun clunky or boring . I have a friend to who plays computer games and is unable to play them unmodified.... I can't see the need for hald the changes and he never finishes s game..
Use house rules for an actual unclear rule.
Finally from personal experience fumble rules are the one thing I'd well from a game over.
GM Haladir's Rules for House Rules:
Rule Zero: House rules exist to make the game more fun for everyone at the table.
1) Codify your house rules before you start play.
2) Make sure that the players have access to your house rules while they design their characters.
3) Never surprise your players with new house rules that affect how their characters work. If you have to change things because an official rule seems "broken," meet with any affected players out-of-game to talk about it before the next session.
4) Don't design rules that introduce additional complexity/randommness, unles your are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that they will enhance your and your players' game experience.
5) Listen carefully to criticism about your house rules, especially if the complaint bois down to, "This rule is making the game less fun."
I had a GM once that liked to add new rules every session, you see he had a hard time telling a compelling story so he compensated with stupid rules to make his pitiful story interesting. For instance detect magic would cause you nosebleeds and might actually harm you if pointed at the source of a powerful magic aura. Roll a 35 on a knowledge check, nope you know nothing of the situation because even if at the start of the session I asked you guys to create pathfinder Golarion based character you where mysteriously transported to another world (I found out it was Eberon afterwards) and thus your knowledge here is useless. CR tables? I do not use these because I am a tough hardcore GM so yeah I will send 9 CR1 creatures at you at level 1. He would justify every weird rules and bad GM call for the sake of story, to this day I am still wondering why he felt that he needed to had and change rules mid game to feel cool. One last thing he did, wanted to change the AC system for the DR armor system, right after a player entered play with a lot of armor class, clearly for him maybe all of this was his way of being a control freak.
So yeah remember rule #1 is it "fun" for your players and yourself?
There is already a very simple rule for hunger and gathering food in survival situations, it's a very simple skill check called survival.
That said your friend/player asking for a roll for barter should open the door to a bit of RP and give you a bonus or a penalty depending on your performance on your roll. After all you are not talking to the merchant, your character is!
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You have entered a running race and spend your spare time studying and planning your journey. You read all the rules so you can follow them, plan your route and know where the finish line is.
On the day of the race you are told that the finish line is in a different place, forcing you to throw all the work you put into planning your journey out the window. You feel like you are running a completely different race but decide to continue, not everything has gone to waste after all.
You've re-planned your journey and are now on your way to the finish line, you can see the end in sight. The judge blows his whistle and tells you the running race has now become a bicycle race. You blink stunned, they told you it was a running race and you planned all your training around it being a running race. Handicapped because you're no longer good at what you entered for; maybe it's not so bad the goal is still in sight and you're almost finished so you push on.
The judge blows his whistle as you're minutes away from the line and he tells you that people with red shirts have to check in with first aid before they cross the line. You notice a racer wearing a white shirt run past you, had you known about this rule you would have worn a different shirt.
You cross the line and the judge tells you the finishing line is now in a different place.
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I use house rules, and don't see a problem with them.
That being said.
"Know why the fence was put up before you tear it down."
Determine the rationale behind why the initial rule was enacted, see if it is functional for the performance of that function, see if it still applies and represents a benefit.
If you judge the item in question requires modification after that review, only then consider the house rule.
The books are, ostensibly, play-tested and balanced, your house rules may or may not be. Also it results in a cascading issue of complexity.
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He...
I guess my question is: how do I get a player who is focused on rules, and offical rules at that, to be more accepting of house rules even if it didn't come from Paizo?
...
I'm envisioning another thread with How do I get a GM to stop changing things all the time for no reason?
My point isn't that you are wrong and he is right. (I wouldn't like the few of your rules that I've seen on the boards. However, I am perfectly aware there are people that do like those kinds of rules.)
My point is that you have different gaming styles and you are unlikely to get him to change. Just as he is unlikely to get you to change.
Having said that, there is a middle ground that usually works. Don't change stuff during the campaign unless you really, really need to do so. And "I think it would be cool!" does not count as really need to.
Think about what rules you feel are needed BEFORE the campaign begins. Think about how you will explain the reason you are making the change, why those rules are needed, what they will accomplish that would not have happened without the house ruling, and this is how it will make things better. Again "I think it would be cool!" is not a reason, need, or accomplishment.
A good example might be: PF does not have a good way to represent ritual blood magic. But ritual blood magic is central to the story we are going to be making. I want rules on how it works so you guys have an idea what can be accomplished and how it could be stopped. Here is what I have come up with so far for ritual blood magic ... What do you like or dislike about it.
A good example is NOT: I think misfires are hilarious. So anytime someone casts a spell there is a 5% chance it hits the wrong target in range.
Then do not change them. The players can make their characters and begin play knowing what rules will be used.