House rules

[tony gent]

Hi all sorry I've not been about for a while but life has got in the way of gaming (not that I'm complaining when the slice of life is my third son).
I was just wondering how meny house rules you use in your games ?
And is there a particular area of rules that seem to get house ruled the most .
And how much thought and debate goes into making these rules
And this is purely out or idol curiosity
Thanks all

[Rub-Eta]

I have a document with about 60 house rules so far. Still adding to the list. It's all between clarification about what sub-systems and alternative rules we use, to granting free feats, to re-writing some abilities.
As of yet, it's only small notes and changes. Though I am loooking into some bigger issues that will require some major house rules.

I do ask my players for their opinion, most house rules doesn't seem to bother them. Some of them we've had longer discussions about and we've worked out something to everyone's liking.

[Firewarrior44]

Depends on who I'm playing with / running the game for.

In some games we use Kirthfinder, which is ~650 pages with of rules and is more akin to a system rework than houserules.

In other games it's just a handful, usually things like more skill ranks / level for characters with only 2 (who are not based off int), Str to intimidate, perception being a class skill for everyone and, the occasional feat tree consolidation.

[Ciaran Barnes]

I used to house rule stuff, mostly because I enjoyed writing them. But it's been been years since I've knowingly used any.

[Theliah Strongarm]

Rub-Eta wrote:

I have a document with about 60 house rules so far. Still adding to the list. It's all between clarification about what sub-systems and alternative rules we use, to granting free feats, to re-writing some abilities.

As of yet, it's only small notes and changes. Though I am loooking into some bigger issues that will require some major house rules.

I do ask my players for their opinion, most house rules doesn't seem to bother them. Some of them we've had longer discussions about and we've worked out something to everyone's liking.

I don't think that's even Pathfinder anymore. XD

Have a nice day!
-Theliah

[Firewarrior44]

Well Pathfidner is just 3.5 With house rules.

Also I'd wager no-one truly plays Pathfinder as written.

[Java Man]

I only have a couple standard ones, but I am willing to tweak or adjust things on an individual basis. Mainly there is no chance to dose yourself when applying or using a poisoned weapon, and bull rush and such can move the target into bad spots, like off a cliff.

[Juda de Kerioth]

I use House Rules like potions with toxcicity (like in the witcher) and a mix set of rules from 5the to PF. I disabeled some feats (you dont need to buy them to use them) and minor class aspects

[Pan]

No more xp system, just level at milestones.

[Air0r]

Most of my houserules are alleviating feat taxes, adding stamina to fighters for free, adding or removing race options, and dropping vancian casting for the far superior magic system that is psionics.

[Mark Carlson 255]

A GM I played with gave out 2nd'ary feats which were feats that could be selected from a list he had created. The feats were not the major ones everyone wanted but the more common ones that every adventures should have but do not do to feat selection shortage disease.

MDC

[Thornborn]

Latest houserule is "When the campaign is rolling for stats, at 2nd level 2 point-buy pts are given to each character, with an additional 1 pt given each lever thereafter. These are spent as if used at creation, before adjustments for race and level."

This lets a very unlucky roller dig himself out of a bad roll, while not funding munchkinery until much later levels, when it's not _so_ bad.

[SheepishEidolon]

I started to write them down lately, so far I am at 7. They focus on comfort and slightly favor players:

Always full HD for PCs and NPCs

Unlimited food and water supplies for PCs
Unlimited ammo for ranged weapons
Encumbrance usually ignored (unless really questionable)

If multiple PCs get the same initiative result, they can pick once who goes first
If a PC and a NPC get the same initiative result, the PC goes first

Diagonal always counts as one square

[glass]

Since I generally do PFS, I don't get to use house rules. If I was running Pathfinder outside of PFS I would probably have quite a few - about 10 pages with judging by the preliminary houserule document sitting on my laptop's SSD.

EDIT: Which possibly makes it sound like more than it is, because where I have modified a feat or spell I have written out the whole new description in its modified form, and there are quite a few. OTOH, there are also quite a few more to add....

_
glass.

[Headfirst]

Here is what I use, just a short list that works great for our group.

[Jiggy]

I'd probably have a lot more houserules if I still played Pathfinder; heck, I might then be playing Kirthfinder.

Having switched to 5E, I find that system as a whole to be far more to my liking, but I still use a couple of houserules. The main ones I can think of are: no XP unless I have a specific reason for it in the campaign, and you can manipulate more than one object per round (for instance, you can whip out both your sword and your shield, or you can switch from ranged to melee weapons, etc).

[PathlessBeth]

I have many minor house rules, along with a few major house rule "packages." Currently all of my house rule packages are written using a lot of nonstandard abbreviations and organized mainly for me to read them, though I am very slowly converting them into a neater, more accesible format (mainly for the benefit of new players, but it will also allow me to share them with others on the web.)

All my house rules are designed to ensure compatibility with all (or almost all) 3.5 supplements: if I didn't care about easy compatibility, there are hundreds of other d20-based systems out there that are already closer to what I want. The principle advantage to using a system like 3.5 is the wealth of material already published for it.

The main house rule packages I have are:
1.) Alignment: alignment does not directly interact with the game rules. However, I still want to be able to grab any d20 supplement and use it, even if a feat or class feature refers to alignment, or if a monster gets Detect Good as an ability. Most of my alignment house rules are mechanisms to automatically convert alignment-encumbered crunch to alignment-neutral rules.

2.)Only five ability scores: The five ability scores are Intelligence, Charisma, Wisdom, Toughness (everything Constitution used to do, plus some of what Strength used to do) and Agility (everything Dexterity used to do, plus some of what Strength used to do.) Obviously, this change is very tricky to implement, since it affects almost everything in the game, and I still want compatibility with all my supplements. I have a simple algorithm for deciding on monsters' ability scores, and other rules for converting class features that depend on strength to my rules. This package is by far the most complicated.

3.)Instead of gaining an ability score increase every four levels, you gain ability score points, and continue to do point-buy as you level (rewarding MADness). Also, I switched to my own point-buy formula instead of the standard one.
This package is actually a lot simpler than it sounds, and can easily be implemented without package (2).

4.)Critical hits....I made a lot of changes. The overall theme is that you get rewarded for succeeding on an attack roll by a large margin (beating your target's AC by 20 is better than just barely hitting). This package is in flux. A lot. I am not satisfied with my critical hit rules, and I haven't really ever been happy with them. I suspect I will be tweaking these rules for the rest of my life, never satisfied. Which is weird, since I'm perfectly happy with my other three house rule packages and am no longer changing them (save for improving their organization and presentation).

[Cuenta]

137ben wrote:

2.)Only five ability scores: The five ability scores are Intelligence, Charisma, Wisdom, Toughness (everything Constitution used to do, plus some of what Strength used to do) and Agility (everything Dexterity used to do, plus some of what Strength used to do.) Obviously, this change is very tricky to implement, since it affects almost everything in the game, and I still want compatibility with all my supplements. I have a simple algorithm for deciding on monsters' ability scores, and other rules for converting class features that depend on strength to my rules. This package is by far the most complicated.

So which parts of Strength made it to Toughness and which to Agility?

[Derek Dalton]

I suppose the only real house rules I enforce is no Chaotic Nuetral Alignment, mostly because people who play that alignment screw with the campaigns thinking they are supposed to playing that alignment.

[Theliah Strongarm]

Pan wrote:

No more xp system, just level at milestones.

I second, third, fourth and fifth that!

[Theliah Strongarm]

SheepishEidolon wrote:

I started to write them down lately, so far I am at 7. They focus on comfort and slightly favor players:

Always full HD for PCs and NPCs

Unlimited food and water supplies for PCs
Unlimited ammo for ranged weapons
Encumbrance usually ignored (unless really questionable)

If multiple PCs get the same initiative result, they can pick once who goes first
If a PC and a NPC get the same initiative result, the PC goes first

Diagonal always counts as one square

That makes survival almost pointless.

If they're in a desert, would you still say the same thing? No food or water for miles in any direction?
It's your game, and I can see why you'd do that, as it's a pain to track those tiny little rules.
But it makes it more realistic.
That's why I play PF. Because there's a rule for everything that makes sense.

[Rub-Eta]

Theliah Strongarm wrote:

That's why I play PF. Because there's a rule for everything that makes sense.

Wha... huh?

[Rub-Eta]

Theliah Strongarm wrote:

That makes survival almost pointless.

If they're in a desert, would you still say the same thing? No food or water for miles in any direction?
It's your game, and I can see why you'd do that, as it's a pain to track those tiny little rules.

It doesn't have to be just because of the tracking and micromanaging.

A week or so ago, I found myself run a one-shot game. The players travled for about two/three weeks, while I only really stopped for about four encounters on the way and some additional RP moments. The players turned to me and asked if they had any water, food or any other supplies with them or if I wanted them to start rolling Survival checks.
And then I realised: this particular game didn't need that. I had prepared a story and a few encounters, I really didn't care for how they got food, water or who took the first watch during the night. Because it was not that kind of game I was running just then.

[taks]

Let's see if I can think of them off the top of my head...

1. Keen and improved critical stack.
2. No coin encumbrance.
3. Most meta-game issues often (though not always) ignored such as food/water, weather, ammo, etc.
4. Knowledge (local: city/region) if you are born from the city/region plus 1 rank every odd level.
5. Caster failing a concentration check does not lose the spell.
6. No damage to weapons/armor, i.e., no sunder (we aren't big on combat maneuvers anyway).

There's a handful of others that don't come up as often. In general, we wing it in a manner that everyone finds agreeable and make corrections next time when something doesn't work out as balance would suggest.