BEST house rules you have played with

[Aetis]

We've all heard the tales of horrifying house rules poor souls were subjected to in their day-to-day tabletop gaming.

Well, say no more! Tell us some of the BEST house rules you have ever seen.

[MrSandman]

D&D 3.5 with wounds instead of hit points. It made combat so much faster.

[Arbane]

One free reroll a session.

[Rodimal]

On player creation we use: Roll 4d6 drop the lowest, reroll Ones.
Also, Rolling a natural twenty is always a hit and always double damage. We instead roll to confirm max damage.
Eschew Materials counts for all materials not just cheap ones.

[Aetis]

One free reroll a session.

But can it be purchased with a large pizza?

[Darth Ultron]

1.During a game, the DM's word is the final say. As a player don't bring the game to a halt to question a situation. If you feel something is wrong, bring it up after the game.

2. Spells & items that create or morph extradimensional spaces, manipulate time, or involve teleportation risk creating planar breaches and other such anomalies each time they are cast/used.

3.Teleportation spells of 4th level or lower (which includes dimension door) can’t transport you further than you can see. The range of these abilities is reduced to line of sight. Spells of levels 5 to 7 allow you to teleport sight unseen

4.The caster must have a clear mental picture of the teleport destination. For the best results the caster must physically be in the target location for a full hour and make careful notes of the sight, sound, smell and feel of the area. The caster must pick a mostly static location, one that does not change with the passage of time. A destination only remains valid if less then 50% of area remains the same to match the mental picture in the casters mind. Small changes, such as a tree blowing in the wind have no effect, however cutting down the tree makes the destination invalid for a caster that has the tree as part of their mental destination picture. If the caster does not have a full hour of physical study in a location, the chance of the teleportation success is only 20%, plus one percent per caster level.

6.Extradimensional spaces are hazardous to teleport. There is a flat 50% chance that anything teleorted in or out of an extradimensional space is lost. There is a further 50% chance that the contents are simply utterly destroyed or teleported to a random location(often, but not always, the Astral Plane).

6.The fatigued condition imposes a -2 penalty to caster level and a -1 penalty to spell save DCs. The exhausted condition imposes a -6 penalty to caster level, and a -3 penalty to spell save DCs

7.No form of metamagic reduction may reduce the spell's level below its original level.

8.A character does not believe in her own illusions, even if she wants to.

9.You can only emulate spells you know or have in your spellbook with shadow evocation and shadow conjuration

10.By default, all creation type magic creates things that are slightly less then average in quality. Divine magic often allows creation of superior things in accordance with the deities ethos. Anything created has a slight feeling of wrongness to it such as the wrong weight(often lighter then the real thing), the reflectivity or shine(often much duller then the real thing), and the texture(often soft and sponge-like). A DC check of 10 for Spellcraft, or any appropriate craft or profession skill can tell the artificial nature of a magically created item.

11.By default, magic that summons or creates objects have as an additional material component a piece of material that was once part of a creature or object of the type to be summoned/created. Pieces of certain exotic monsters will have a high market value. (So Eschew Materials will be ineffective). Only some divine magic can ignore this.

12.The strain of binding and controlling a summoned creature imposes a cumulative -1 penalty to caster level for each creature currently summoned.

13.When casting a summoning spell, there is a 1% chance per spell level that the spell goes horribly awry and summons something else entirely.

14.Magic that summons/calls have as an additional material component a piece of material that was once part of a creature or object of the type to be summoned/called.

15.Any magic that Changes your body and brain is an inherently risky business. Every hour a character spends in a form with a type other than his own, he must make a Will save, with a DC equal to normal DC of a spell of this level, +1 for each hour they’ve spent in the form, +1 for each of these saves they’ve failed. In any sort of stress or combat this save must be made each round. Failure means the character becomes the form it has taken in body and mind.

16.Magic that changes your body have as an additional material component a piece of material that was once part of a creature or object of the type to be changed to/polymorphed. Pieces of certain exotic monsters will have a high market value. (So Eschew Materials will be ineffective).

17. Divination spells do not grant sufficient information to become familiar with an area, meaning they cannot be used to teleport.

18.Ability Damage and Drain: Spells 3rd level and under provide Ability Penalties instead of Ability Drain and Ability Damage.

19.Using a scroll is a Full Round Action, that provokes AoO and cannot be done Casting Defensively.

20.Divine magic is power sent from a deity to a mortal. And what that power does depends on the target: A friendly target gets a positive effect., and a hostile target gets a negative effect.

[Quertus]

What a cool thread! Kudos to the OP.

Best "house rule", for me, was "RAW". And, if there was any question what RAW was, we'd look it up. And, if there was any question what RAW meant, we'd argue it until we agreed, however many hours that took. Best. Games. Ever.

Sadly, only my brother agreed with my assessment on the value and enjoyability of those sessions.

Best for overall enjoyment of players who don't share our last name / proclivities for enjoying a good, friendly, constructive debate? We play "by RAW", which actually meant "by the rules, as everyone at the table remembers them". If there was any debate as to what the rule is, we'd have "five minutes" to make our arguments - which can, IME, be of the form, "here the RAW entry in the book", or "but, if X, then Y - and nobody wants Y". If no decision is reached within "5 minutes", then the GM flipped a duplex cookie. White side up, it worked however was best for the party right this second - and was permanently written into the house rules. Black side up, it worked however was worst for the party right this second - and was permanently written into the house rules. This way, reality was consistent, your character's story was always consistent, and you could plan based on a reliable reality - even without hours of my beloved rules lawyering.

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Most memorable addition? D&D characters, with added Avatar (the last air Bender) powers. Sadly, we didn't play that game for long.

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Best for my chosen Higher Goal of Role-playing? Probably the group that would often ask questions of the form, "The version of your character who lives in my head wouldn't have done X, they would have done Y. You had them do X. Why?"

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Best non-D&D house rule? Hmmm... I'ma go with, "you can take as many flaws as you want".

[Son of A Lich!]

- Roll 3d6 in place of a D20 for attacks, damage, etc. The bell curve probability is a huge boon to Mundane characters, as having a +2 in a roll can make or break a combat encounter, Especially if you are going to be making that roll numerous times.

-Popcorn initiative, Roll off for who goes first, they pick who goes next after their turn. Can't pick someone twice until everyone has gone, familiars, animals companions and summons all go on the controllers turn, Hydras, Ettins and some aberrants get multiple rounds instead of multi-attack benefits. I read about this from Angry DM and have used it ever since, Everyone becomes invested in the tactics of when to let the opponent go and if they will be picked next, and thank god, you never have to worry about "Wait, you skipped me!" ever again.

[Seto]

In 3.5, everyone gets Power Attack and Weapon Finesse for free. That way they become tactical options rather than feats, and they're not a tax on feat chains.

[Quertus]

11.By default, magic that summons or creates objects have as an additional material component a piece of material that was once part of a creature or object of the type to be summoned/created. Pieces of certain exotic monsters will have a high market value. (So Eschew Materials will be ineffective). Only some divine magic can ignore this.

16.Magic that changes your body have as an additional material component a piece of material that was once part of a creature or object of the type to be changed to/polymorphed. Pieces of certain exotic monsters will have a high market value. (So Eschew Materials will be ineffective).

I would totally game this, harvesting my monsters (or just clipping their hair, fingernails, etc) for fun and profit. Especially profit.

Problem is, the default "best" monster - the Hydra - lacks hair or nails. Fortunately, good ones regrow heads.

Something I really like about this rule - gaming it for fun and profit aside - is that, if you find a monster with templates - say, a half-dragon Hydra - one should be able to use pieces of it to summon or transform into templated versions of monsters.

So, in this regard, I like these rules better than the default "no templates" rule.

[Arbane]

I would totally game this, harvesting my monsters (or just clipping their hair, fingernails, etc) for fun and profit. Especially profit.

The only thing you're going to be summoning is ORCUS!

[Darth Ultron]

I would totally game this, harvesting my monsters (or just clipping their hair, fingernails, etc) for fun and profit. Especially profit.
So, in this regard, I like these rules better than the default "no templates" rule.

The basic idea is to, of course, stop players from just opening a book and saying ''I create or summon this". It is 100% effective on stopping players from cherry picking things from books.

It also has the nice effect of making many creatures and substances of much greater value and usefulness. It does make for a nice magical economy, as everyone will pay for a bottle of 'X' creature.

And even better is most of the time you can only buy a couple pounds of anything...and it will be very expensive. So it does make for a perfect instinctive for going on a hunt yourself to get a whole creature or two.

[Eldan]

No rolling for stats. Players just write down what stats they like. Honestly, this has saved me so much headache and debate as a DM. And if they really think they need all 18s, eh, let them have their power fantasy.

Likewise, no class skills. Everyone gets the entire skill list. I trust my players not to abuse it too much.

Base attack bonus/weapon focus is now a skill, by weapon groups. I.e. a fighter would take four ranks in Attack (polearm) and have a +4 to hit.

Based on that, everyone gets 6+ intelligence bonus skill points per level, except rogues and bards (and a few other skill classes), who get 8+. I gently remind my players that yes, profession, obscure knowledge and crafting will occasionally help in a situation.

[DigoDragon]

One free reroll a session.

I liked this one when we tried it once for D&D. It really helps in a Save-or-Die situation.


In Shadowrun 4e, one houserule that turned out pretty good was where I only awarded the payments the Johnson for missions completed, not karma. To get karma, players would spend 2,000 Nuyen per karma point. To better balance this, I increased the payments a little bit per runner. Also, to keep karma inflation in check, only the payment from the Johnson counted for converting to karma (no stealing/selling cars to bank karma points). This worked out because each player had different cash and karma needs, so they could choose how much of each to take in.

[Pelle]

In 3.5, changing 'negative 10 HP = death' to 'roll on table of permanent injuries with only a small chance of lethal injury'. Although not universally appropriate, it worked very well for the specifics of the campaign it was used.

[Quertus]

The basic idea is to, of course, stop players from just opening a book and saying ''I create or summon this". It is 100% effective on stopping players from cherry picking things from books.

It also has the nice effect of making many creatures and substances of much greater value and usefulness. It does make for a nice magical economy, as everyone will pay for a bottle of 'X' creature.

And even better is most of the time you can only buy a couple pounds of anything...and it will be very expensive. So it does make for a perfect instinctive for going on a hunt yourself to get a whole creature or two.

How many PCs profited by selling off monster parts?

Oh, thanks for reminding me - one if the most fun sounding house rules I've heard of but never played with involved using monster parts for items and foci. Want to cast Fireball? You don't need to research the spell per se, but you do need to create a focus made from appropriate materials - which is usually the body parts of monsters.

So, the Wizard wants to learn Fireball? He decides to track down a Red Dragon, and create a wand tipped with one of its teeth as his focus. The Fighter decides to inset a Tooth or two into his sword to give it the Flaming property. The Thief decides to prefer some scales, make a paste from them, and use it to stain his clothes to gain Fire Resistance. Maybe the Cleric takes the wings, and turns them into a Winged Cloak. Or dries the dragon's gizzard, and uses it as the fire half of his own focus for Flame Strike.

This gives people a reason to adventure, ties their abilities into their history, and makes their items much more cool than the Christmas tree of another +4 item off the rack.

[Faily]

• Great Destiny (D&D): Once per session, instead of dying, one PC will be stabilized at -9. This is a party resource, so it can only happen once per session. Has been very nice for the group that has a very unlucky player.
• Backgrounds in Star Wars (FFG). Players can choose from a list of backgrounds of what kind of life their character come from, and will get 1 free skill rank tied to that background (i.e military can give a rank in Warfare or Ranged: Light). It's a minor bonus that also helps some players flesh out their character more.
• Improving feinting in combat (Pathfinder). Feinting for normal folks is a move action instead of a standard action, improved feint makes it a swift action for one attack, greater feint makes it apply to all attacks. Makes feinting a viable tactic in combat.
• Doubling the bonus from Combat Expertise (Pathfinder). Since attack bonuses quickly outpace AC after starting levels, Combat Expertise now doubles the bonus gained. So -1 to attack means +2AC.

[Darth Ultron]

How many PCs profited by selling off monster parts?

Several hundred.

This gives people a reason to adventure, ties their abilities into their history, and makes their items much more cool than the Christmas tree of another +4 item off the rack.

Well, I do that for magic item creation:

*At 3rd level all non spellcasting classes gain the Create Magic Item Ability. This ability allows them to take magic item creation feats. They may pick one at 3rd level and one more every three levels. Magic item creation is essentially unchanged from the way a spell caster does it. Except that the spell need not be cast by them, or they can drain the spell from a scroll or magic item(destroying the item in the posses).

And

Spoiler: Magic Item Creation

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Magic Item Creation

All magic items need three components: Mundane, Rare and Exotic.
*The mundane component is simply the physical form of the object. It must be made out of special materials to hold the magic.
*The rare component is something that locks the magic effect into the item. This is most often a creature part, but can be any physical thing.
*The exotic component is not physical thing, it is a process. It is what needs to be done to finish the item. It is a process of what to do at a set time and maybe place.

As the caster level increases, so does the hardness of the components. A 5CL item might only need oak wood, but a 10CL item might need 100 year old oak wood, and a 15CL item might need 100 year old oak wood that has been struck by lightning. A rare component that is a creature part is must be from a creature of HD at least equal to the CL. After 10 CL, many items get extreme rare components, such as a daisy steeped on by a dragon at midnight. Proses get harder as CL's go up. At 5CL the item might just have to be made at night. 10 CL on a high mountain in the winter, and 15CL and above often have a exact location like the ''Fire Pit of Doom''.

Some components are set, but most change depending on the time. A character must research what components are needed, or otherwise gain the information. Or optionally, the character can simply self experiment to know the right components. A set of components only remains valid for roughly three months, then they will change.

A Knowledge(Arcane or Divine, as appropriate) check can be made anywhere the character can do research, with a DC of 10, plus the caster level of the item. Divination magic can also be used. Self Experimentation requires a full hour with the component in question, and a primary spellcasting ability check of 10 plus the caster level of the item(Mundanes use whatever ability of Int, Wis or Chr is highest). Each component, mundane, race and exotic must be checks separately.

Example: Dorst wishes to make a minor circlet of blasting. He knows it must be made primarily of gold(from the item description). He checks the research (DC 10 +6 =16) and discovers that phosphorus is needed as well. He uses a divination to get the crypic knowledge that he figures out to be the rare component: seven pryolisk feathers. For the exotic component he simply tries self experimentation. Each hour he tries a flame related posses, making a check (DC 16 again) to see if it is the right one. If he does not stumble upon it, he goes back to research what it might be or cast another divination for a clue.

[Hunter Noventa]

It's usually pretty easy to disagree with you Ultron, but you've got some good ones in there.

6.The fatigued condition imposes a -2 penalty to caster level and a -1 penalty to spell save DCs. The exhausted condition imposes a -6 penalty to caster level, and a -3 penalty to spell save DCs

7.No form of metamagic reduction may reduce the spell's level below its original level.

8.A character does not believe in her own illusions, even if she wants to.

6 is actually quite good I think. Makes something like Ray of Exhaustion a more serious threat. 7 is just plain common sense as is 8.

[Rhedyn]

For Savage Worlds, I make D&D bosses by giving the boss multiple initiatives and every time the party "kills" the boss it removes one initiative and only one initiative can be killed per attack. It's like making the party fight a whole squad of Wildcards but they look like one monster.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Masks: Adding "Is your character telling the truth?" to the list of Pierce the Mask questions.

Burning Wheel: Adding a new subsystem called Bloody Adventuring, designed along the lines of the Bloody Versus subsystem, which lets you make a few rolls to go "adventuring", getting cash and/or wounds out of the process depending on how well you roll.

[Tvtyrant]

In 3.5, changing 'negative 10 HP = death' to 'roll on table of permanent injuries with only a small chance of lethal injury'. Although not universally appropriate, it worked very well for the specifics of the campaign it was used.

My group did something similar, where a crit made you roll on a minor wound chart and dropping below 0 rolled on a major wound chart. These couldn't be healed by low level magic and left permanent scars. It was pretty popular.

[Tron Troll]

3.Teleportation spells of 4th level or lower (which includes dimension door) can’t transport you further than you can see. The range of these abilities is reduced to line of sight. Spells of levels 5 to 7 allow you to teleport sight unseen

4.The caster must have a clear mental picture of the teleport destination. For the best results the caster must physically be in the target location for a full hour and make careful notes of the sight, sound, smell and feel of the area. The caster must pick a mostly static location, one that does not change with the passage of time. A destination only remains valid if less then 50% of area remains the same to match the mental picture in the casters mind. Small changes, such as a tree blowing in the wind have no effect, however cutting down the tree makes the destination invalid for a caster that has the tree as part of their mental destination picture. If the caster does not have a full hour of physical study in a location, the chance of the teleportation success is only 20%, plus one percent per caster level.

I like them...they are going to be added to my game!

6.The fatigued condition imposes a -2 penalty to caster level and a -1 penalty to spell save DCs. The exhausted condition imposes a -6 penalty to caster level, and a -3 penalty to spell save DCs

Humm..I notice lots of spell caster ones....but this one does seem right to me too.

9.You can only emulate spells you know or have in your spellbook with shadow evocation and shadow conjuration

This seriously nerfs the two spells...

12.The strain of binding and controlling a summoned creature imposes a cumulative -1 penalty to caster level for each creature currently summoned.

This...humm...might be nice to nerf summoners.

17. Divination spells do not grant sufficient information to become familiar with an area, meaning they cannot be used to teleport.

Another good one.

20.Divine magic is power sent from a deity to a mortal. And what that power does depends on the target: A friendly target gets a positive effect., and a hostile target gets a negative effect.

This is a big vague, what do you mean here?

Well, I do that for magic item creation:

So everyone can make magic items? This feels unbalanced, but I do like the idea. It might lessen the thing where everyone has to reliy on the spell casters to make magic items.

For magic item creation, how do you decide what to set the additional components as?

[JeenLeen]

For D&D 3.5, everyone gets 1 free "trash feat", which is limited in power and is generally a feat tax (e.g., feat you don't actually care about but a pre-req for another feat), Eschew Materials, or something akin to Skill Focus for boosting a skill.

The main purpose was to allow access to some feats that were otherwise annoying to get OR limit annoying factors in the game OR allow us to flesh out a character by giving some skill points to something we otherwise might not get.

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For World of Darkness & other d10 games: death tokens.
You start with 1, and earn others by really good RP. You can trade in a death token to negate 1 point of damage IF that damage would kill you or leave you unconscious in a situation that would kill you.
Alternatively, you could save the death tokens to negate some xp loss upon death. (We had a houserule that, in usual circumstances, a new PC started with the xp of an old one, minus 3. This penalty might be decreased if the situation made it really hard to survive, or increased if we seemed not to really care and be eager to die to get a new character.)

Even without the xp-based rules, it really helped some circumstances where you'd die. Gave a chance to heal, teleport way, or regroup.

Also changed a lot of rules on initiative and splitting actions to make it easier and faster to play.

[Kurald Galain]

The Dodge feat gives a flat +1 to AC instead of slowing the game down every single turn to pick one target for it.

[kebusmaximus]

In 3.5, changing 'negative 10 HP = death' to 'roll on table of permanent injuries with only a small chance of lethal injury'. Although not universally appropriate, it worked very well for the specifics of the campaign it was used.

I have also done something similar. In my current pathfinder game, we replaced the normal death rules with 5e's system. So, when you go down to 0 hp, you begin "death saving throws" instead of negative hp.

[Ken Murikumo]

3.Pathfinder:

We use the content in the "pathfinder feat tax" article that made its rounds a while back. I've made a few small modifications, like adding deadly aim to the list of feats everyone can do (i cant remember if it was part of the article, but i include it anyways seeing as its a ranged power attack).

I added some weapon enchantments to the list for my players, specifically the ones falling behind on damage:

Spoiler: Replace attack stat

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First one makes it so the weapon can use the chosen stat to make attacks (like a sword that you use intelligence to attack with instead of strength or a bow that uses charisma). This replaces the normal attack stat and trying to fight the weapon and use the normal stat imposes a -4 penalty (using strength on the mentioned sword would impose said penalty).

Spoiler: Add stat to damage

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Second adds an untyped bonus to damage equal to attack stat of the weapon. This does work in tandem with the first enchantment but does not require it. For instance a bow could have a dex to damage bonus granted, or even a finesse weapon (assuming they are using dex to attack). The damage only takes place if you use the same stat to attack, dex-dex, wis-wis, etc.

Spoiler: Results

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It's worked out well so far as most of my players don't go book diving to get multiple stats for attack and damage. The players that do know some trick (two to be exact, myself included) generally don't use them in favor of the "thrill of the hunt" for obscure stuff. The only weirdness is technically you can use the second enchantment to get an untyped damage bonus equal to strength on normal melee weapons seeing as their attack stat by default is strength. Combined with a few levels of two-handed fighter to get the 2x str. feature and you can get some decent damage racking up. I would, however, kindly ask the players not to use this if they figure it out, lest they face single hit damage in range of 100k+ using mythic vital strike shenanigans.

For weapon damage i came up with a system where you don't roll weapon damage, instead you deal minimum, average, or maximum damage depending on how much you beat the enemies' AC by. Just beating is minimum, beating it by 5 or better is average, and 10 or more is max damage. Sneak attack (and its kin) and weapon abilities like flaming also follow this mantra. This speeds up combat soooo much for us. We also have a player that doesn't math very good and another who maths excellently but slowly. They insisted on rolling spell damage, so we do. I had mentioned this a while ago and was faced with overwhelming negativity from this forum, but in practice it's worked better than i would have thought, so that's a thing...

Combine all of the above with a huge homebrew modern gun roster that includes fallout style weapon & armor mods for all ranged & melee weapons and armors giving the players get access to some new tactics and variety in combat.


Mutants & Masterminds 3rd:

I started limiting the parry/dodge/toughness ratios to 3:1. In other words 1.5x your PL is max, and .5 is minimum for those numbers; at pl 10, max toughness would be 15, in turn making minimum dodge/parry 5. The opposite is true with toughness 5 and dodge/parry 15. We had some issues with maximum toughness and dodge/parry characters resulting in some really long or really short combats. Mostly it was the other GMs creating "bosses" with maximum toughness that took way to long to damage. I was scouting around the ronin army forums and saw that this was pretty common.

Another thing i started was for "high lethal" campaigns damage degrees beyond first created higher toughness penalties. Normally the chart is 1st: -1, 2nd: -1 & dazed, 3rd: -1 & stunned, 4th: incap. My chart is 1st: -1, 2nd: -2 & dazed, 3rd: -3 & stunned, 4th: dying or incap. The other DMs adopted this because it makes combat run smoother with lots of enemies (non-minions) where before it took lots of effort to bring down each guy.

The trade off to the above is that the stunned condition from a 3rd degree failure lasts only 1 round then goes to dazed, rather than lasting a minute.

[Darth Ultron]

So everyone can make magic items? This feels unbalanced, but I do like the idea. It might lessen the thing where everyone has to reliy on the spell casters to make magic items.

For magic item creation, how do you decide what to set the additional components as?

Yes, the idea is every character can make magic items, not just spellcasters. It's not unbalanced at all, in fact, it brings lots of balance to the game. Now everyone, even a commoner of high enough level can make magic items.

I don't really have a method for picking additional components...it's just whatever I think of...the more powerful the item is, the harder the components are. Often players find it better to just create the needed bit and not try and find it or just wait for it to happen.

[Quertus]

even a commoner of high enough level can make magic items.

Can you explain that bit?

The translations I've thought of are...

If he has enough XP.

If he can match the item's "caster level".

If he has the power to take down the creatures to use as components.

Or possibly even something to do with WBL.

So what does that bit really mean?

[Darth Ultron]

Can you explain that bit?

The commoner would need to be of at least 3rd level, when they get their pick of free magic item creation feat. Then they would need to meet the things like XP and ''creator"(not caster) level. The big difference is they enchant the item by a ritual and don't have to personalty cast the spell(s) needed.

Note also cooperative magic item creation is already in the rules, just add the option (from the long ago Wizards.com) that creators can share costs like XP however they want.

The idea is not that the average commoner is making a vorpal sword +10, but more that are making an Everfull Mug or a Yoke of Unseen Oxen. And in a lot of cases people will make cheap or very cheap items, like items useable only once a day or that only have a couple charges(the MiC idea of three charges per day works perfectly too).

It does have characters that gain XP for things other then pure combat.

The over all effect is a lot more magic in the world, but not all powerful magic.