LF Constructive Criticism and Opinions on a few House Rules for Solo Campaigns

[BigP4nda]

Hi, I have a few house rules I plan on using (maybe) and would like to hear from experience GMs and players alike what they think of them.
Here they are:

Ability Scores: For solo campaigns only. I am think of having a dice pool of 18d8, reroll 1's and 2's and divide the results among your stats (3 dice per stat)
The point of this is precisely to provide rather powerful results to make the PC more epic and heroic.

Campaign Milestones: This can possibly be used in group games as well, but may cause some issues depending on the situation. I know there are other GMs that do this, but not sure if they do it quite the same way.
So basically the idea of this houserule is that whenever the PC completes a certain part of the story, or achieves an important goal or challenge (such as slay the dragon that's been terrorizing his country for the past few centuries) I reward him with feats and abilities.
A few examples:

• granting the PC the toughness feat after spending a year training with a martial arts master
• Giving the PC the constant ability of true seeing after he inevitably dies and is resurrected by his deity (on purpose for story progression) and is given a gift to aid him in his journey
• granting him the weapon focus feat after he spends a year's worth of disciplined training (preferably with a teacher of some kind)
• giving him the keen senses trait after spending months on end deep in the wilderness, surviving or tracking something.

This is all I have for now, as I come up with more I will use this thread to post them.

What do you think? Do you like them? Would you use them? What would you change? Any specifications you would recommend?

[BigP4nda]

bump.

[Arrius]

Regarding campaign milestones: I do practice this, and call them Quest Feats. There can be a maximum of 1 per 5 character levels, and they are specified as rewards for completing the quest. There are mini-rewards which are as traits.

Regarding ability scores: I roll with 2d6+6. On average it has very good attributes. I prefer if they do not get out of hand, because regarding balancing for a single player, you may easily overshoot your mark.
I introduce these powers, and a lot of GMPCs. They help get the story across, subtly railroad, and can even provide advice if the player has a very good idea off the rails.

[Nyaa]

There are two important things you haven't mentioned.
First is action economy. Your player might find himself in the position of a typical badly designed boss encounter - ie overwhelmed by a number of weaker opponents.
Second is experience (and to lesser extent WBL). If you look at the table, you'll see that single PC will be around three levels higher than a party of four in any given moment. Results of being 1.5 spell levels ahead of encounter can be devastating. You can give him 3 CR worth of templates instead of levels, but that leads either to casting stat being so high enemies never make their saves, or melee types ragelancepouncing everything to death.

For ability scores, I use +15pb over AP/module suggestion, and +6 skill points per level (5pb and 2 skill points per missing PC).

Have a look at gestalt rules too.

[Koshimo]

Gestalt is a good idea as Nyaa mentioned, giving the player leadership for free (even if they aren't a cha based character) is another option and more helps the action economy part.

The most important thing is to balance the setting to the fact that there is only 1 PC, if you are running an AP and it calls for 10 smaller enemies turn it into 3 bigger ones so it doesnt feel like you are essentially solitairing and playing most of the game by yourself

there was also another thread that I was reading talking about the idea of building the big 6 items into character leveling that may be another way of giving the player a boost that he can have those magic item slots open for smaller more RP element type items

for the rolling d8's i would cap a given stat at 20 it still allows the player to be more powerful than normal but stops them from being that far above the norm in any stat

also did the quick math on 18d8's rerolling 1's and 2's if he gets straight average rolls the points spread over 6 stats is an average of 16.5 so you may want to lower that a bit, or just simply say the player starts with 3 18's 3 16's before racial mods and make it easier that way

[Nyaa]

Koshimo wrote:

3 18's 3 16's

While that might be mechanically necessary, I can't really imagine such a superman. I use "super elite" array of 18 16 14 12 10 8 (32pb) with "free templates" level handling.

[BigP4nda]

Gestalt is something I would use, I really like the idea of gestalt, though for newcomers I would advise against it because that's throwing a bunch of more choices at them when they don't even know half of what they already have.

The dice roll system is supposed to have that kind of average, I am hoping the player to be the Beowulf of the story. If for some reason another play decides to join, I would probably have the original reroll his scores but go back to the higher ones should the other PC drop out, but that is unlikely to happen.

I do like the idea of limiting the milestones, but I feel 1 every 5 may be too limited, It is mainly so that the player doesn't waste his few feats on ones such as iron will, or toughness, or endurance. Again to round out that "Beowulf" feel.
Perhaps 1 every 3?