What common house rule do you hate the most?

[DRD1812]

I joined a new group recently, and was astonished to discover that critical hits were something of a sore spot. Apparently, deciding whether to roll twice or roll once and then double was an ongoing feud (comic for illustrative purposes).

It got me wondering: What other common house rules to folks feel strongly about? Using third party material? Homebrew fumble charts? Is there anything that sticks in your craw so bad you'll actually quit over it?

[TheFinish]

Critical Failures, or Fumbles, or however you want to call it. Hated people putting that house rule into PF1, and I hate it's actually become a non-house rule in PF2 for some things.

And keep in mind, I don't mean stuff like "A Natural 1 on an Attack Roll always misses." I mean "A Natural 1 always misses, and now you get this extra bad thing."

[Brutedude]

For me it's Nat 1s mean you auto-fail outside of combat. As someone who loves playing skillful characters it's infuriating if my master thief has a 5% of falling on his face and alerting the guards whenever he does literally anything.

[Lanathar]

House rules should always be a benefit to the players over the core rules - otherwise it would just cause sore spots

So that natural 1 on skills thing is general nonsense - apart from where the designers have added critical failures on certain skills . But even then an absolute master would just have a 1 mean one lower category of success. Against on level challenges that will be a problem but running round a basic town it won’t

We used to play where 1s were either drop your weapon or bowstring snapped. I hated it and that carried over into the critical hit and fumble cards. But players seems to like them and I just got them as a birthday present so there you go...

[thenobledrake]

I haven't experienced any of these personally in a long time because I'm an "always GM", but I have seen some of them discussed for PF2 and dislike them to their very core reason:

Criticals: Back in the day critical hits were an optional rule and I didn't like them at all (because they heavily favor monsters, yet players think they are "cool" - and are kinda blind to how much trouble they are actually having as a result of them existing). Then critical hits became a default rule and the house-rules to dislike became extra special effects besides damage or things like "I don't like that a critical hit can do less damage than a normal hit, so critical hits start at maximum normal damage and then you add more" because they are both illogical and worse for the players.

Critical Failures: When I hear a GM say "you rolled a nat 1 so you drop your weapon" or other stuff like that, I tend to be done playing. Definitely done if 'fumbles' get to the point of draining hp from your own character or another in the party.

And in both the case of crits and crit fails, I feel like PF2 has solid results that feel like the game actually works with them rather than being tacked-on results that destroy the established math of the game just by existing.

Incapacitation: I've seen some folks talking about reducing the impact of the incapacitation trait... and I'm way against it. Also against other changes that equate to "make wizard stronger" - it's one of my favorite classes, and always has been, but I really hate spells being excused to do anything and everything better that other options.

And then there's the thing which can make me quit a game even if the house rules individually aren't dealbrakers: house rules that counter your own house rules.

I've seen stuff like a GM that says they want to run a harder campaign, so they are going to use higher level challenges, but then they give the PCs significantly higher than normal ability scores. And other forms of changing one thing, not liking the result of that change, and then making another house rule instead of removing or adjusting the first one. Completely destroys my confidence in a GM.

[Gorbacz]

"A natural 1 misses and you hit yourself or an ally" is probably the most widespread and reviled houserule. Every time someone brings it up I ask if they have a 5% chance of blowing up anything they do at work, the answer is usually a blank stare.

I don't mind a "a natural 1 misses and something funny but mechanically irrelevant happens" houserule, especially if we're playing a Jackie Chan/Indy Jones action comedy where the highly capable protagonist nevertheless gets their share of swords stuck in wooden planks or buckets of water appearing out of thin air, but turning the game into a clown bonanza is too much.

[ExOichoThrow]

Its become official now but hero points/inspiration points. Ironically I now play in games that house rule the opposite. I hate the idea of good boy points and hate that it's become an official rule.

[thenobledrake]

I'd probably hate hero points if I thought of them as "good boy points" too... I know I don't like inspiration since it's handed out for playing "right" rather than just playing at all.

But the reason I came to post again is I forgot one of the house-rules I dislike earlier:

"Let's roll ability scores" being followed with some wild process like (to use an exaggerated example, but not so exaggerated as to never have been something someone told me they use) 5d6, re-roll 1s and 2s, keep 3 highest, and if you don't get at least one 18 swap your best roll for one.

It's fiddly and obnoxious and doesn't have a clear goal because if you want random scores what's with all the mitigations, and if you want high scores why not just have high scores? And if you're really dead-set on random scores but only within a higher range, you can get there more simply like using 3d6, trade lowest for 6.

[Exocist]

My personal house rule for rolled scores is if you roll, you use the method presented in the book and you have to keep that array. And I'll only allow it for the first character in any campaign, if that character dies, future characters will use the standard method. No suddenly deciding you want to use the standard generation method because you rolled terribly. So far I haven't had anyone purposefully try to kill themselves after rolling bad stats, but then again I haven't had many people say "I'll roll stats" anyway.

[Ascalaphus]

CRB p. 471 wrote:

The GM determines whether you can use reactions before your first turn begins, depending on the situation in which the encounter happens.

When GMs interpret this to clutch onto 1E ideas that you should never get a reaction before your first turn. Or worse, when they try to link it to exploration activities in a vain attempt to force people to do something other than Search. Especially when the other activity is redundant (Scout, when multiple party members already gain that bonus from feats/features and it won't stack).

[Vali Nepjarson]

thenobledrake wrote:

I've seen stuff like a GM that says they want to run a harder campaign, so they are going to use higher level challenges, but then they give the PCs significantly higher than normal ability scores. And other forms of changing one thing, not...

I generally agree with everything you're saying, but I would say that in this instance there are reasons why a person might do this that are completely reasonable.

One of my favorite games I've ever played in involved going up against high level enemies but also with PCs having very high ability scores to "even this out". The reason why was to give the players a sense that they were in a world that was ordinarily dangerous but they were able to handle it by being more powerful even than other adventurers. Admittedly, it took us a few sessions to get the "balance" right, but we were doing it more for setting the stage than anything else. It was fun.

As far as the ability scores things go, most of our games roll for stats, 3d6, throw out anything less than 10 unless you want it for a character reason (we had a Barbarian who wanted an Int of 8). We like the randomness, but don't want someone to feel bad by getting a roll of 5 or 6 and feeling like now their character that they put a lot of heart into sucks because of one, or a couple, bad rolls.

As for house rules that I really cannot stand, I agree with Fumbles being an absolutely terrible idea that turns heroes into laughing stocks, but even worse for me is the "Rule of 3s" that I've played with a couple times.

Roll a Nat 1 is an auto miss, and then you roll again to "confirm". A second Nat 1 is then a Fumble. This alone so far is marginally better than the regular Fumble rule in terms of reasonability (although it is somewhat clunky), but then if you Fumble you also have to roll a 3rd time. If you get a third Nat 1, then NO MATTER WHAT YOU WERE DOING, you die. You were picking a lock? Your hand slipped, your lockpick fumbles out of your hand and you stab yourself through the eye and into your brain...

That was almost verbatim the explanation given for why my buddy's Rogue died and he had to roll up a new character.

The same is true in reverse of 3 Nat 20s in a row. Doesn't matter if you are a level 1 character fighting Cthulu. You just killed that Great Old One. Lucky you.

After a very big falling out as a result of said Rogue dying (who was a favorite at the table), we adjusted this rule so that it only applied in combat and couldn't be used to auto-kill PCs or boss enemies. And the Rogue got a cool eye-patch out of the deal after we used our one Scroll of Raise Dead to bring him back. That was marginally better but I still never got the bad taste out of my mouth for that rule.

[The Gleeful Grognard]

- Anything made to "correct problems" in a system before a GM has even run a campaign or tried to see the design elements in play "I know better" syndrome. Also includes people who going into something planning on proving it not working so they can justify their dislike.

- Auto succeed everything 20s auto fail everything 1s.

- Humour trumps all. If a player is good at playing the fool thry get all the meta currency points, all the bonus exp, all thr outside of the rules "rule of cool" actions and become the star while the other players get relegated to supporting roles. I mention this as a house rule because while it might not be explicitly mentioned I have seen it often enough as the interpretation of rule of cool to be wary of it.

[glass]

TheFinish wrote:

Critical Failures, or Fumbles, or however you want to call it. Hated people putting that house rule into PF1, and I hate it's actually become a non-house rule in PF2 for some things.

Personally I draw a distinction between "critical failures" and "fumbles". The former are fine if implemeted well and properly integrated into the system, the latter are never fine unless you are deliberately a slapstick comedy game (and I do not, generally).

I think there are two use-cases for critical failure:

1. When you are doing something particularly dangerous, but not so dangerous that a simple failure leads to a bad result. The classic example is climb and swim checks, whereby simple failure leads to no progress, but critical failure causes you to fall or sink. In systems without a standardised critical failure system, these tend to accumulate ad hoc critical failure rules which may or may not be consistant.

2. Where the system has defensive rolls (such as saving throws), as an analogue to critical success on an attack roll.

PF2 has both of these, and IMO they work pretty well. But the "properly integrated into the system" is key, so they rarely work well as house rules.

Conversely, fumbles IMO are things like supposedly-competant warriors (and it is almost always warriors who suffer the brunt of these things), dropping their weapons one time in 20 and/or having a non-trivial chance of decapitating themselves. I do not care how well integrated into the system they are, I do not want.

thenobledrake wrote:

Criticals: Back in the day critical hits were an optional rule and I didn't like them at all (because they heavily favor monsters, yet players think they are "cool" - and are kinda blind to how much trouble they are actually having as a result of them existing). Then critical hits became a default rule and the house-rules to dislike became extra special effects besides damage or things like "I don't like that a critical hit can do less damage than a normal hit, so critical hits start at maximum normal damage and then you add more" because they are both illogical and worse for the players.

Actually, max damage damage dice is very close to the average for double damage dice. So as long as the extra dice you add is only enough on average to account for the fact that you are not doubling the static, the average damage on a crit will be the same. And given that the PCs are expected to win, the increased predictability helps them more than it hinders.

Of course, to implement it well requires more mathematics than most house-rulers are prepared (or able) to do. So it certainly has the potential to be a bad houserule.

_
glass.

[Lanathar]

The Gleeful Grognard wrote:

- Anything made to "correct problems" in a system before a GM has even run a campaign or tried to see the design elements in play "I know better" syndrome. Also includes people who going into something planning on proving it not working so they can justify their dislike.

- Auto succeed everything 20s auto fail everything 1s.

- Humour trumps all. If a player is good at playing the fool thry get all the meta currency points, all the bonus exp, all thr outside of the rules "rule of cool" actions and become the star while the other players get relegated to supporting roles. I mention this as a house rule because while it might not be explicitly mentioned I have seen it often enough as the interpretation of rule of cool to be wary of it.

On the first point I am pretty sure there are an entire set of house rules on the homebrew forum to “correct” 2E that we’re written by the poster shockingly quickly after the actual release...

[Ascalaphus]

Over the years I've become more and more skeptical of house rules. Often the gain is just some niche improvement, at the cost of more overall complexity. And often it's "correcting" some perceived unrealism that really doesn't matter all that much.

Maybe a good test of house rules is: every time the GM wants to add a new house rule, The GM has to run a number of laps equal to the square of the total number of house rules. If that becomes to burdensome, then maybe there's already too many house rules. Is this one worth running more laps, or is it time to scrap some low-value other house rules?

[Gorbacz]

The Gleeful Grognard wrote:

- Anything made to "correct problems" in a system before a GM has even run a campaign or tried to see the design elements in play "I know better" syndrome. Also includes people who going into something planning on proving it not working so they can justify their dislike.

Yup, all those design ronin who claim to have fixed glaring issues with the system, yet when you ask them if they did playtest their house rules the answer is "I'm a great designer with excellent insight" and later somewhere you discover that their first game is now at level 2.

[thenobledrake]

glass wrote:

Actually, max damage damage dice is very close to the average for double damage dice. So as long as the extra dice you add is only enough on average to account for the fact that you are not doubling the static, the average damage on a crit will be the same.

I think you missed the point. I was not talking about someone house-ruling critical hits to be 100% of 1x damage instead of being a random roll of 2x damage. I was talking about someone believing that because a normal hit could do X damage if you rolled high, and a critical hit has a minimum of less than X if you roll low, that the answer is to make a critical hit do 100% of 1x damage, and then also extra on top of that.

To put numbers to it: a hit that would do 2d8+8 gets house ruled from (2d8+8)x2 to 2d8+32.

glass wrote:

And given that the PCs are expected to win, the increased predictability helps them more than it hinders.

PCs being expected to win isn't exactly relevant, and is actually put more into jeopardy as a result of rules that increase the lethality of critical hits because critical hit rules inherently favor monsters - they often do larger pools of damage and make more attacks than PCs do, and PCs getting killed is an obstacle to continued game-play rather than par for the course like monsters being killed is.

[thenobledrake]

The Gleeful Grognard wrote:

Humour trumps all.

I dislike that kind of house-rule too! Gosh, I keep being reminded of more house-rule types that bother me as the thread continues.

Most specifically in this territory is that I hate when the "rule of cool" is cited as motivation for changing or ignoring all the rules that exist to facilitate something working because it was described in a cool way. I've always believed the "rule of cool" as meaning "if someone describes their character's action in a cool way, but there's no mechanical benefit gained by that so it's effectively identical to 'I attack the enemy with my weapon' don't go adding in checks or penalties that are a result of the cool description"

I.e. if someone says "I dart toward the orc, powerslide past it and slam my maul into it as a I do" you say "Okay, that's a Stride and a Strike, roll it." rather than "Make an acrobatics check or your powerslide stops short." And definitely not "Cool move! Roll with a bonus
!"

Vali Nepjarson wrote:

I generally agree with everything you're saying, but I would say that in this instance there are reasons why a person might do this that are completely reasonable.

There might be, but I've yet to see an example of that. Even the example you provide could have been acheived by leaving the rules as-is, but choosing to describe things differently. For example, having normal characters and using the stats of normal level monsters, but describing those stats as though they were higher level monsters (1st level vs. kobolds - but say "you battle impossing, powerful dragonkin, but they are no match for your might."

Ascalaphus wrote:

Over the years I've become more and more skeptical of house rules.

Same here, especially as I've noticed how the ones I myself use and the ones other people bring up online seem to serve significantly different purposes.

And I've always had an aversion to house-rules because there's so many games out there to play, and I'd rather go looking for one that I don't feel motivated to tweak and tinker with to enjoy it than to spend the time futzing with 'repairs.'

So the majority of house rules that I do use fall into two categories: stops a player complaining, or reduces book keeping that isn't giving an upside in practice. Meanwhile I see a lot of folks implimenting house rules for power-related reasons... oh, and another:

I hate when a house rule boils down to the GM saying "I have a personal preference, and as a result there is now a rule." Like when a GM doesn't like a particular class or ancestry and bans it from ever being played at their table no matter what. I'm always confused as to how such GMs can even get players to join them, since that kind of house rule demonstrates a lack of caring what a player might want from the game. And I mean, I have a history of thinking gnomes weren't a unique enough thing (pre-Golarion, of course) for it to be justified that they are their own thing rather than a kind of dwarf (or elf, depending on the variety) - but the idea of telling a player "No gnomes" because of that is entirely alien to me.

[Claxon]

I didn't mind critical failure rules in PF1, I rather enjoyed the critical hit/failure deck for PF1, they made things interesting. Although I did houserule the deck rules so far as you got to draw the card for crits and see the effect and decide whether you wanted it or a normal crit effect. The failures spiced up combat and could be recovered from.

In PF2 I would hate critical failures because combat is way more finely tuned and something that seems small could actually be a big deal in PF2 combat.

[HumbleGamer]

I mostly hate every rule which modifies the existent ones, apart from some very limited stuff which could enhance the game, but still without affecting any of the existing rules ( for an instance, I'd like to set a 6-10 seconds time limit per player to decide what to do in their turn, to both speed up the combat and put pressure on players. Players won't also speak that much during combat, if not for what concerns off rpg stuff, because everything they'll say in terms of strategy and fight, like "delay your initiative so i throw a fireball first", will be also heard from enemies ).

I am open to "new classes" and "new archetypes", as well for "new weapons", "focus spells" and "spells".

This is something which could get some help by being tested ( most of the work can be done even without testing stuff, since it is obvious when something would be way too overpowered ), and extra options are imo always nice.

This part works especially if you have a rational group of players, able to recognize and point out stuff if its not balanced.

On other thing I dislike is during combat to have the DM rolling attacks and damage dices in secret, and then telling players the results.

I prefer a fair approach instead ( if the enemies roll too good and somebody dies, Amen ), as well a DM able to improvise when it's needed ( ok a premade adventure, but sometimes you'll be at a crossroad, having to choose between cheating or find an alternative way to let the party proceed ).

[Salamileg]

thenobledrake wrote:

I hate when a house rule boils down to the GM saying "I have a personal preference, and as a result there is now a rule." Like when a GM doesn't like a particular class or ancestry and bans it from ever being played at their table no matter what. I'm always confused as to how such GMs can even get players to join them, since that kind of house rule demonstrates a lack of caring what a player might want from the game. And I mean, I have a history of thinking gnomes weren't a unique enough thing (pre-Golarion, of course) for it to be justified that they are their own thing rather than a kind of dwarf (or elf, depending on the variety) - but the idea of telling a player "No gnomes" because of that is entirely alien to me.

I feel this in my soul. Particularly because, in my experience, players end up making me like ancestries I didn't like before. When I was primarily a 5e GM, I didn't particularly like gnomes or kenku until someone played them. Now I love introducing kenku/tengu NPCs and gnomes are my favorite small ancestry.

[Ubertron_X]

thenobledrake wrote:

Like when a GM doesn't like a particular class or ancestry and bans it from ever being played at their table no matter what.

"I said it once and I will say it again: No Kenders!" :P

[KrispyXIV]

Ubertron_X wrote:

thenobledrake wrote:

Like when a GM doesn't like a particular class or ancestry and bans it from ever being played at their table no matter what.

"I said it once and I will say it again: No Kenders!" :P

I have a soft houserule against Evil characters, because I personally dislike material intra-party conflict and think it hurts games.

I'm not talking about character rivalries, but anything that could lead to one player or character inflicting meaningful harm on another is strictly forbidden.

Evil characters who can get along with this restriction are allowed... but I dont know that I trust all my players with that.

I've gotten minor flak for being against stuff like thieves stealing from their own party, but I stand by my position.

I brought this up because its a personal preference thing that I don't think is totally unreasonable, and because I find the Kender reference hillarious, but also relevant - its my understanding that playing a Kender was actually used sometimes to "justify" annoying or harmful behavior inside the party.

[ikarinokami]

I love critical fumbles and critical hits, they make the game interesting and not a purely determinist endevour will i never find fun or interesting. truthfully house rules made AD&D 2d playable as a wizard. pretty much every GM I ever played AD&D 2d with ignored the what spells are you preparing for the day rule.

The only house rules I don't like are ones that imposed artificial limitations for no good reason, or nerf a character, one of the few times I killed a character because of house rule, was a nerf my rogue talent offensive/defensive feature, which annoyed me, as my rogue was in group with a oracle and druid, and my rogue gets singled out for a nerf after the fact.

[Draco18s]

thenobledrake wrote:

"Let's roll ability scores" being followed with some wild process like (to use an exaggerated example, but not so exaggerated as to never have been something someone told me they use) 5d6, re-roll 1s and 2s, keep 3 highest, and if you don't get at least one 18 swap your best roll for one.

You know...this generates a pretty interesting distribution. Mind, 1d6 reroll 1s and 2s is basically just a d4+2, which is how I modeled it, but the range of values is actually something that's usable.

Average value of 14.62 with a spread of 1.89

(Drop "sum largest 3 {1d4+2,1d4+2,1d4+2,1d4+2}" without quotes into this tool and hit "calculate probabilities").

Sure, its going to generate very high values in general, but so does 25 point buy. (Did a couple arrays, {10 16 16 17 14 15},{12 15 16 14 17 17}, {17 17 14 15 15 17}, {16 13 16 15 17 12}, {10 12 18 16 16 14}; looks pretty appropriate for a high powered game IMO, though I'd probably stick with "reroll 1s" and let 2s stand).

So, for having been a completely off the cuff example, it works.

Related, one of the most interesting rolling systems I've used was one that I helped the GM fine tune to get the desired outcome. It was a little fiddly, but it did what we wanted it to, and wasn't too bad. The only reroll qualifier was meant to discourage extreme abuse and in practice it wasn't needed very much.

Spoiler:

Basically you got 20 dice (d6) and had to assign each one to a stat, eg. STR: 4d6, DEX: 5d6, CON: 2d6...
You would roll and you keep the highest 4. If you had less than 4, tough cookies (I think the minimum was 2 dice).
If that generated a value above 18, reroll.

It was for a one-shot of 20th level with characters who were supposed to be legendary in their own right. It combined the features of pointbuy (the ability to have influence over how invested you were in different attributes) with the features of 4d6 kh3 (a level of uncertainty).

Dealing with figuring out what a stat array looked like involved several emails to the guy that made T-Roll (link above) in which he had to overhaul a system to support what we were trying to do.

[Deadmanwalking]

I find several of the above annoying as well, but my least favorite House Rules personally fall into two categories:

1. The never announced House Rule. Doesn't matter what it is, this is where you find out about a major rules difference between this game and the actual rules for the first time mid session, with no apologies nor any ability to do anything about it. Particularly annoying when it invalidates mechanical aspects of your character. Basically amounts to false advertising. Especially bad if applied inconsistently.

2. In PF2 specifically, a blanket ruling of 'Uncommon things are only available if a book specifically tells you they are'. That's really clearly not how the game is designed to operate (not outside Organized Play anyway, and there are ways to get Uncommon stuff there) and is deeply frustrating to me since a Uncommon things are not more powerful than Common ones, but are necessary to make many cool concepts function.

[Malk_Content]

Mine is pretty simple. If you cant fit your house rules onto a single a4 page in size 10 font, I'm not playing your game. If any one of those house rules takes more than 20 words to explain, I'm not playing your game.

[dirtypool]

Lanathar wrote:

On the first point I am pretty sure there are an entire set of house rules on the homebrew forum to “correct” 2E that we’re written by the poster shockingly quickly after the actual release...

Also a fair bit of engagement in rules questions threads where there was a significant amount of finger wagging and lecture about how their house rule was the only "viable" way to play it. Only to then discover they never played the game RAW.

[glass]

thenobledrake wrote:

glass wrote:

Actually, max damage damage dice is very close to the average for double damage dice. So as long as the extra dice you add is only enough on average to account for the fact that you are not doubling the static, the average damage on a crit will be the same.

I think you missed the point. I was not talking about someone house-ruling critical hits to be 100% of 1x damage instead of being a random roll of 2x damage. I was talking about someone believing that because a normal hit could do X damage if you rolled high, and a critical hit has a minimum of less than X if you roll low, that the answer is to make a critical hit do 100% of 1x damage, and then also extra on top of that.

To put numbers to it: a hit that would do 2d8+8 gets house ruled from (2d8+8)x2 to 2d8+32.

I don't think I missed anything; your initial post was considerably less specific than your follow up. And the more specific case would be covered by my comment about being implemented badly.

glass wrote:

And given that the PCs are expected to win, the increased predictability helps them more than it hinders.

PCs being expected to win isn't exactly relevant, and is actually put more into jeopardy as a result of rules that increase the lethality of critical hits because critical hit rules inherently favor monsters - they often do larger pools of damage and make more attacks than PCs do, and PCs getting killed is an obstacle to continued game-play rather than par for the course like monsters being killed is.

PCs being generally expected to win is completely relevant. Increased randomness/reduced predictability always favours the underdog. That is the whole reason why crits favout the monsters. The amount that they do so is presumably taken into account, but obviously a houserule that increases the potency of crits (like the one you eventually gave) obviously increases the effect of randomness on the fight and harms the PCs on average.

Conversely, an effect that makes the effect of crits more predicatble without increasing the average potency increases the overall predictability compared with RAW, so helps the PCs.

_
glass.

[Puna'chong]

I really liked the PF1 critical hit/fumble decks. They added a lot of interesting moments to my campaigns, and for the most part weren't too seriously debilitating. My players really enjoyed them too, they were a "moment" at the table. I also let players pick their poison from 2 cards on the fumbles, so it didn't feel like I was punishing them. And the cards only came out on a "confirmed" failure, so a nat 1 followed by a roll that would have missed.

There were characters who, by the end of a campaign, had specific scars and missing digits from crits they sustained. One character got crit (and killed) by magic, and decided upon resurrection that the magic crit permanently changed their hair color. It was fun.

I would be careful with it in 2e though, and haven't implemented anything like that. The math seems a bit too tight and auto-fail or auto-succeed isn't really a thing anymore. My players still ask for the card decks though.

That said, I'm not interested in houserules that fundamentally change things to make it more difficult or more tedious for players, or stifle good faith efforts to have fun. I also don't like, for lack of a better word, neckbeardy homerules that seem to have an agenda or punish a certain class/playstyle/etc. Or houserules that seem intended to play favorites with a particular class or player for whatever reason.

I DM full time, so all of my own houserules are by agreement with the table, and only things that streamline systems the table doesn't care for or to "hotfix" things that seem wrong. Otherwise we're following the rulebook until we hit something that seems unfun. I've never banned an ancestry, and I think a lot of things get worked out well in Session 0. I do type up my own rules before a campaign (usually after talking with the players first), and I pass it around and treat it like US jury selection, where players can strike a rule they don't want to play with.

[DRD1812]

Claxon wrote:

I didn't mind critical failure rules in PF1, I rather enjoyed the critical hit/failure deck for PF1, they made things interesting. Although I did houserule the deck rules so far as you got to draw the card for crits and see the effect and decide whether you wanted it or a normal crit effect. The failures spiced up combat and could be recovered from.

I'm using a crit fail deck for the fist time over in Starfinder, but there is a small issue... How did you mitigate against it being more harmful for martials than casters, what the the increased chance of rolling d20s in combat?

[MaxAstro]

dirtypool wrote:

Lanathar wrote:

On the first point I am pretty sure there are an entire set of house rules on the homebrew forum to “correct” 2E that we’re written by the poster shockingly quickly after the actual release...

Also a fair bit of engagement in rules questions threads where there was a significant amount of finger wagging and lecture about how their house rule was the only "viable" way to play it. Only to then discover they never played the game RAW.

I like how everyone here knows exactly what is being talked about...

-----

On topic, I've fiddled with a lot of house rules over the years and I'm definitely someone who judges a system by how many house rules I feel the need to implement (not that it's always a bad thing; I rewrote Exalted 3e almost entirely from scratch but I still love that system).

But there are definitely some house rules that I regret using or that looked like a good idea until I saw them in play. Allowing keen and Improved Critical to stack in 1e, for example. It's crazy how hard game design is; little tweaks can have huge knock-on effects.

As far as house rules that other GMs have used that I personally dislike, critical fumbles are definitely on that list. Also any rule that can turn the game completely lethal by sheer bad luck - the "a natural 20 followed by a natural 20 is an instant kill" rule some people use comes to mind.

[KrispyXIV]

Deadmanwalking wrote:

2. In PF2 specifically, a blanket ruling of 'Uncommon things are only available if a book specifically tells you they are'. That's really clearly not how the game is designed to operate (not outside Organized Play anyway, and there are ways to get Uncommon stuff there) and is deeply frustrating to me since a Uncommon things are not more powerful than Common ones, but are necessary to make many cool concepts function.

Who do we suggest this idea to - For Adventure Paths, provide a list of the Uncommon spells or options that are specifically likely to cause complications for GMs.

Age of Ashes provides access to several, which are fine. I didn't see any particular issues with them in general, so I went the direction of "tell me first, and explain how you're getting access and things are good".

And then there's a mini dungeon where Ethereal Jaunt just bypassed the whole thing :D. It was worse than Teleport in this case because it allowed for the party to progress without also investing in Divination or other additional resources straight to the goal of the area, and then teleport out without any complications.

We all agreed that it was legit... but it was also anticlimactic.

[dmerceless]

I can definitely add to the dislike for critical fumbles. My first PF2 GM insisted on using them on natural 1's, and with some pretty nasty effects. He only changed his mind after we got captured (as a band-aid fix to avoid a TPK) by Kobolds in a moderate to low encounter after our two-handed Fighter lost his main weapon during the first attack he did.

[thenobledrake]

KrispyXIV wrote:

Who do we suggest this idea to - For Adventure Paths, provide a list of the Uncommon spells or options that are specifically likely to cause complications for GMs.

I like that idea. Could be slipped in via sidebar like how Extinction Curse has a list of magical treasures that can be found within a chapter at the beginning of the chapter.

On the other hand, I've just been working under the assumption that an AP is written expecting that the only uncommon or rare options that the GM will be allowing are the ones written into that AP... since the adventure planning stage is where I'd decide as a GM which uncommon or rare options I'd be allowing in a campaign I was making up on my own.

[AnimatedPaper]

thenobledrake wrote:

KrispyXIV wrote:

Who do we suggest this idea to - For Adventure Paths, provide a list of the Uncommon spells or options that are specifically likely to cause complications for GMs.

I like that idea. Could be slipped in via sidebar like how Extinction Curse has a list of magical treasures that can be found within a chapter at the beginning of the chapter.

Agreed. A sidebar of "These uncommon spells/recipes/feats/archetypes/thingamabobbers are unlocked in this chapter" would go over pretty well, I think.

[Loreguard]

I recall being annoyed by an old houserule for fumbles that really irritated me, because any nat 1 was a fumble and would have noticeable effect, but I'm pretty sure that criticals still had to be confirmed. I really felt that fumbles needed some form of confirmation method to make them not be a 5% thing. In the end, I'm not sure, they may have changed it so that crit's due to a nat 20 didn't have to be confirmed, after bringing that up, but I still found it frustrating. However, in some cases, you play because the opportunity is rare to play, so you live with the style you have available to you.

Houserules that come up after the start of the game and significantly impact my character concept in a negative manner also were frustrating. Nothing like finding out that the story I gave to the GM along with the character sheet which got approved, the character can't accomplish any of the things they did in their background with the abilities that I chose, that I thought would give them the ability do so reasonably well. Again, the issue being, I wrote a background, gave a character sheet with abilities, and it was approved, but then when I behave like did in my background my success chance at doing their thing is at the 0-5% range, seems like it should be a surprise to me, that something might been said about the background being inappropriate.

With that said, I never had an issue with a GM saying at the start of a game what sort of classes, races, books, and such were in his campaign setting. I might have asked for clarifications if based on given information something sounded viable, but perhaps on the edge. Since a GM's job is to take care of the decisions about the campaign setting and make it work, I felt it was completely in their right to limit races or classes based on how they felt the game should play.

Generally, I'd try when doing houserules, to try to grant things, rather than take away, as obviously that is easier to 'market' as a rule, and I'd plan on going over with the players what house rules we would be using if any. If you have to take away something, see if there is anything you can give them in its place that would work. And probably if I am GMing, just about any house rule would be on the table to potentially be removed, even if I was strongly in favor of it, if the bulk of the other players felt it wasn't something they felt helped.

Some house rules might be important for playing a particular setting, or genre of adventure however, so in some cases if certain rules aren't seen as being helpful, it might call for looking at a different adventure/genre/setting.

[Vali Nepjarson]

thenobledrake wrote:

Vali Nepjarson wrote:

I generally agree with everything you're saying, but I would say that in this instance there are reasons why a person might do this that are completely reasonable.

There might be, but I've yet to see an example of that. Even the example you provide could have been acheived by leaving the rules as-is, but choosing to describe things differently. For example, having normal characters and using the stats of normal level monsters, but describing those stats as though they were higher level monsters (1st level vs. kobolds - but say "you battle impossing, powerful dragonkin, but they are no match for your might."

Yeah, but that can only get so far with people who have played the game before and know exactly how powerful a Kobold is. Doesn't quite having sense of power that being a level 5 party and decisively handling 3 level 6 enemies can bring.

Again I'd never want to make that a major or common thing, but it can have it's places.

[Gortle]

Gorbacz wrote:

The Gleeful Grognard wrote:

- Anything made to "correct problems" in a system before a GM has even run a campaign or tried to see the design elements in play "I know better" syndrome. Also includes people who going into something planning on proving it not working so they can justify their dislike.

Yup, all those design ronin who claim to have fixed glaring issues with the system, yet when you ask them if they did playtest their house rules the answer is "I'm a great designer with excellent insight" and later somewhere you discover that their first game is now at level 2.

In general terms I agree with you. For a system as complex as PF2 you for need to test it. It is a poorly laid out rules set and you often have to pull together 3 different rules sections to understand it. Fixing a system early most often comes from not understanding it. You should not try to fix anything systemic early.

However:
a) I could tell Traveller was a highly unbalanced system from my first read of the rules.
b) I put down the D&D5e handbook for the first time and said it is way too easy to build a character with an AC that is almost unhittable - and it is, most GMs are very careful about handing out magical armour and shields.

Further in PF2:
The first time I read the rules on Incapacitation or Hero Points or Point Buy, I knew that these were parts of the game my players would not want. We used Point Buy but some of the players have still refused to use Hero Points.

There are some fairly obvious bugs in the rules. Like Snakes not be able to Grapple as they don't have a hand. As soon as you see stuff like this you have to either house rule to get past it, or just avoid that part of the game.

[Charon Onozuka]

Rolling a natural 1 always equals failure. I remember the first time I heard this was when I was considering playing a crafting character. Couldn't get past the idea that they'd be expected to fail roughly every 1 out of 20 projects regardless of how simple a task was compared to their skill level. IRL, I don't think I've ever had a job in which a 5% rate of complete failure would have been acceptable and can't imagine a supposedly skilled skilled character being that incompetent.

The Gleeful Grognard wrote:

- Anything made to "correct problems" in a system before a GM has even run a campaign or tried to see the design elements in play "I know better" syndrome. Also includes people who going into something planning on proving it not working so they can justify their dislike.

Heartily agree. I've even responded to my players in early Playtest/PF2 sessions asking if I'd houserule something by telling them I plan to finish a few adventures by RAW before considering messing with anything mechanical just to avoid accidentally doing this myself.

[KrispyXIV]

Gortle wrote:

We used Point Buy but some of the players have still refused to use Hero Points.

Its unfortunate, these carry a lot of weight for helping with lower success rates and 'filling in for' take 10 without assurance, and that sort of thing.

[Watery Soup]

Gorbacz wrote:

Every time someone brings it up I ask if they have a 5% chance of blowing up anything they do at work, the answer is usually a blank stare.

5% is a little high, but I'm a chemist, so the answer isn't 0%. :P

Never had anything explode, but I've had two flasks implode and I've had to put out 3 fires (I've only caused one of them).

---

More on topic, I think critical failures / fumbles are fine so long as they're creative. If you drop your weapon every time you roll a 1, that gets boring, and 5% is high.

I think the Glass Cannon Podcast did a good job. It's a random list, and that list is populated by fans, so nobody knows what's going to happen. I think they confirm their fumbles, too, which is a way of lowering the chance of absurdity from 5% to something much lower.

[Watery Soup]

As for something I hate, I agree with the inflation of character stats. 3d6, 6+2d6, 4d6, 5d6 reroll 1s and 2s, whatever ... just don't keep ratcheting it up higher and higher because every character has to be more epic than the last.

You should end up with a below-average character half the time.

[Draco18s]

KrispyXIV wrote:

Gortle wrote:

We used Point Buy but some of the players have still refused to use Hero Points.

Its unfortunate, these carry a lot of weight for helping with lower success rates and 'filling in for' take 10 without assurance, and that sort of thing.

I love Edge in Shadowrun. Its an amazing subsystem.

PF2's Hero Points? Utter garbage in comparison. And you're going to be hard pressed to tell me it was a good addition to the game when the first pass told GMs to award a hero point if the player brought pizza for the group.

Sure, that was removed in the final released wording, but wow the guidance on when to award a point is vague and unhelpful.

Quote:

Look for those moments when

everybody at the table celebrates or sits back in awe of a
character’s accomplishments

PF2's design almost necessitates that these moments to be the result of luck. Because remember, half the time you fail at doing stuff!

But also, give out a point every hour. Just being alive is an accomplishment.

[KrispyXIV]

Draco18s wrote:

PF2's Hero Points? Utter garbage in comparison. And you're going to be hard pressed to tell me it was a good addition to the game when the first pass told GMs to award a hero point if the player brought pizza for the group.

Someone - it may have been you - brought up elsewhere it would have been nice if they had been further supported in the system via feats and such.

That said, I happily give hero points to players for taking notes, keeping track of initiative, etc. It encourages people to volunteer, and be invested in keeping the game moving.

[Lanathar]

Gortle wrote:

Gorbacz wrote:

The Gleeful Grognard wrote:

- Anything made to "correct problems" in a system before a GM has even run a campaign or tried to see the design elements in play "I know better" syndrome. Also includes people who going into something planning on proving it not working so they can justify their dislike.

Yup, all those design ronin who claim to have fixed glaring issues with the system, yet when you ask them if they did playtest their house rules the answer is "I'm a great designer with excellent insight" and later somewhere you discover that their first game is now at level 2.

In general terms I agree with you. For a system as complex as PF2 you for need to test it. It is a poorly laid out rules set and you often have to pull together 3 different rules sections to understand it. Fixing a system early most often comes from not understanding it. You should not try to fix anything systemic early.

However:
a) I could tell Traveller was a highly unbalanced system from my first read of the rules.
b) I put down the D&D5e handbook for the first time and said it is way too easy to build a character with an AC that is almost unhittable - and it is, most GMs are very careful about handing out magical armour and shields.

Further in PF2:
The first time I read the rules on Incapacitation or Hero Points or Point Buy, I knew that these were parts of the game my players would not want. We used Point Buy but some of the players have still refused to use Hero Points.

There are some fairly obvious bugs in the rules. Like Snakes not be able to Grapple as they don't have a hand. As soon as you see stuff like this you have to either house rule to get past it, or just avoid that part of the game.

What is the snake point you are talking about?

They have the Grab special ability . I am looking right at the Ball Python stat block. And that is for free after an attack roll in line with how snakes tend to operative

Is your complaint that they don’t have the inferior option that suffers from MAP?

It doesn’t seem like a bug to me

[IconicCatparent]

I once played in a 5e game where I tried to knock-out an enemy non-lethally, and the GM told me that I had killed them because my character had rolled max strength at creation and didn't know how to handle it!

I won at rolling stats but lost at finding a campaign to play in.

[MaxAstro]

Draco18s wrote:

KrispyXIV wrote:

Gortle wrote:

We used Point Buy but some of the players have still refused to use Hero Points.

Its unfortunate, these carry a lot of weight for helping with lower success rates and 'filling in for' take 10 without assurance, and that sort of thing.

I love Edge in Shadowrun. Its an amazing subsystem.

PF2's Hero Points? Utter garbage in comparison. And you're going to be hard pressed to tell me it was a good addition to the game when the first pass told GMs to award a hero point if the player brought pizza for the group.

Sure, that was removed in the final released wording, but wow the guidance on when to award a point is vague and unhelpful.

Quote:

Look for those moments when

everybody at the table celebrates or sits back in awe of a
character’s accomplishments

PF2's design almost necessitates that these moments to be the result of luck. Because remember, half the time you fail at doing stuff!

But also, give out a point every hour. Just being alive is an accomplishment.

It's funny - I'm totally fine with PF2e's Hero Points system, but I think in large part that's because I mentally compare it to 1e's Action Points, which WAS utter garbage.

So my standards are low. :P

And there we are - even if it's an "official" house rule, Action Points might actually be my most hated house rule of all of PF1e...

[Cydeth]

My least favorite house rule was when the GM decided to implement facing for all characters, and only allowed Rogues to sneak attack from behind.

Then they decided to have all enemies (including rats), use back-to-back fighting and such. Not a pleasant time.

[Gortle]

Lanathar wrote:

What is the snake point you are talking about?

They have the Grab special ability . I am looking right at the Ball Python stat block. And that is for free after an attack roll in line with how snakes tend to operative

Is your complaint that they...

Check out the snake animal companion.