Worst. House Rule. Ever! The dumb house rules thread

[Koumei]

The cartoon cloud of dust and fists and stuff rolls over and engulfs you, too).

That would be cool as an actual ability. "When grappling, you can use an [action] to move half your move distance, dragging the entire grapple with you. If you move into someone else, friend or foe, you may make a grapple attempt to add them to the grapple against their will."

Maybe add something about being able to instead bullrush/trample people, and if you fail at that, they get to leap into the grapple.

But as a rider for failing an attack? Stupid. Especially seeing as the kind of person making melee attacks into grapples tend to have low strength, Medium size at the largest and a 3/4 BAB.

[Maxus]

What made it worse--it was just a bad dice day. For everyone

The ranger and his wolf tried to attack at the same time. The wolf rolled a 1. They collide in midair, no attack gets through despite the Ranger's 17, and fall onto the target, which starts the grapple.

My character indeed tried a rapier stab on target (a dire gopher), and rolled a 1. All of a sudden, he's in the pile with a medium-sized gopher, a wolf, and an elf.

[ModelCitizen]

One from an AD&D game in high school: Any time a spell would fail, it triggers a random spell instead. Of any level. Like roll on the scroll chart or some shit that's what comes out of your hands.

This was high school and that game was really fun and playing spell failure Russian roulette was like 80% of my 1st level mage's contribution to the party. But looking back I don't know what the fuck we were thinking when we made that rule.

[Winnah]

AD&D 2e, The Moses rule.

The DM wanted to encourage divine casters to expand their repotoir from healing spells only. So divine casters were treated like 3e sorcerers with all relevant spells from their allowed spheres known.

Plus there was some percentage chance decided by level, that they could call on Divine Intervention and have their deity intervene on their behalf, at the cost of a quest to be named after the event.

[TOZ]

Oh yeah, the 'your god takes an interest in what you do' rule.

Do something your god doesn't like, you lose spell slots. Do something he likes, you get more.

[Stahlseele]

What made it worse--it was just a bad dice day. For everyone

The ranger and his wolf tried to attack at the same time. The wolf rolled a 1. They collide in midair, no attack gets through despite the Ranger's 17, and fall onto the target, which starts the grapple.

My character indeed tried a rapier stab on target (a dire gopher), and rolled a 1. All of a sudden, he's in the pile with a medium-sized gopher, a wolf, and an elf.

sorry, but the way you write this, it sounds really funny ^^

[RobG]

On the Nat 1 thing..

Was hard up for a game a few years ago and I went to Game Parlor on a random Monday to see if anyone had a game going. I talked to Brandon at the counter and he said there was one game in the back room but I wouldn't want to join that one.

Me: Why not?
Brandon: It's the weird Monday group.
Me: Well.. all gamers are weird
Brandon: No dude. They're weird. Really.

I can handle a little weird. I talked to The DM with the rest of the group after the game. They seemed a bit more geeky than usual but not too out of the ordinary. The DM started going over houserules and mentioned that one of them was "You drop your weapon on a 1".

Me: So a 20th level fighter drops his weapon every 30 seconds?
DM: ???
Me: He attacks 4 times a round. 20 times in 5 rounds. 5 rounds is 30 seconds.

A small pause and a look of comprehension later he spoke. Now he could have said a few things at this point. Things like..

A) Hmm.. I guess I never really thought about it that way. It is a little odd.

B) Well. Combat is messy. It's not like a civilized duel. When you're getting knocked around by stuff ten times your size bad stuff is going to happen.

C) Yeah. It is a little silly but it makes the game more fun and less predictable. I like it.

But what he actually said was..

Well.. We just don't roll a lot of 1's.

..at this point he looked to the rest of the group, who all started nodding.

"Yeah, we hardly ever roll 1's"
"You roll a 1 once every twenty times you roll" *me*
"No, it doesn't happen that often"
"I haven't rolled a 1 in months"
"Yeah, it's just not a problem"
"Nobody rolled a 1 tonight"
"We're just really good at rolling"
"Yeah"

At this point I slowly backed out of the store. I caught a glimpse of Brandon laughing at me as I turned to head to the parking lot.

[Koumei]

Well, it sounds like they all do (with an implicit understanding) what I recommend people do with those silly rules: any time you roll a natural 1, just pretend you rolled a 2. That shouldn't turn a failure into a success (and if it does, then seriously, you have bigger problems to worry about), it just avoids a stupid catastrophe.

Alternatively, if you want to spite them, get the d20 from that F1 racing board game, with 11-20 on it twice.

[RobbyPants]

I've had my fair share of stupid rules, such as:

[*]Creating lists of dozens of languages for "realism" and to keep people from learning them all with a few skill points.
[*]UA facing rules.
[*]Crit fumbles (in my defense, they had to be confirmed like crits, but you lost the rest of your attacks).

My friend who DMs sometimes makes some weird ones, too. Typically, the biggest problems either involve him not thinking of the math or not thinking about how easy it is to game the system. Some were:
[*]Adding a Luck and Mana score to the six ability scores, with no penalty for having a stat below 10 (so they're easy to dump).
[*]Home-made VP/WP system where you only get a tiny amount of WP, but crits still apply to WP damage and pretty much any crit can kill any person regardless of the level!
[*]Tracking a person's activities for the level to figure out what they "practiced" to figure out where they could spend their skill points and feats.

The mindset of all Paladins is like that of a fundamentalist Christian.

I have to admit I flirted with this once over a decade ago. It never really came up in game, but for a while, I was making this assumption, too.

[hogarth]

AD&D 2e, The Moses rule.

The DM wanted to encourage divine casters to expand their repotoir from healing spells only. So divine casters were treated like 3e sorcerers with all relevant spells from their allowed spheres known.

I once played in a campaign like this, and the rule is less stupid than it sounds; you'd still end up casting Cure X Wounds 90% of the time anyways.

Allowing clerics to spontaneously cast Cure Wounds spells is more elegant, though.

I'm not saying it's good, just that it's a lot better than a lot of the other things I've seen in this thread.

Your experience may be different, but I do not personally believe that D&D melee fighters need an enormous kick in the crotch (in the form of a huge extra failure chance) because they're too powerful.

[nockermensch]

No teleportation through anti-magic fields. It's been a year and I still can't get over it.

Eh? This one sounds actually reasonable, the way I'm visualizing it:

"Teleportation requires a special "line of effect" of uninterrupted magic space to the target. If the target is enclosed on dead magic/anti-magic zones, you can't teleport to it."

The actual house ruling here seems to be the unstated assumption that teleportation moves on the prime instead on the astral.

[Ferret]

No teleportation through anti-magic fields. It's been a year and I still can't get over it.

I don't hate this.

[Grek]

One of my DMs, after our melee dudes discovered the special attack section, made a houserule that you had to spend 1d4 turns "recovering" after using bullrush/trip/charge/feint/whatever before you could use that ability again. Cue groans from fighters.

[nockermensch]

One of my DMs, after our melee dudes discovered the special attack section, made a houserule that you had to spend 1d4 turns "recovering" after using bullrush/trip/charge/feint/whatever before you could use that ability again. Cue groans from fighters.

I think the better answer for such mindset (this also applies for the "only the first attack in a round is a sneak attack") is to immediately roll up a cleric or druid and fluff him as a fighting man. Additionally, roll up a sorcerer and fluff him as your trapspringer / face.

So you end with an iconic party of druid (fighter), sorcerer (rogue), cleric (cleric), wizard (wizard). Everybody would be happy then.

[Guyr Adamantine]

*Facts*

Unfortunately, I forgot to mention this was during my short test trial of 4th edition. No such thing there, I'm afraid.

Another one, though from much farther: Transmutation and other shapeshifting effects destroy your clothing. Anything to get my rogue naked, actually.

[fectin]

Actions on the same initiative count happen simultaneously (with unpredictable effects!)

[nockermensch]

*Facts*

Unfortunately, I forgot to mention this was during my short test trial of 4th edition. No such thing there, I'm afraid.

Another one, though from much farther: Transmutation and other shapeshifting effects destroy your clothing. Anything to get my rogue naked, actually.

So I'm taking this was something to nerf eladrins? The stupid coefficient increases substantially so.

Re: Getting your rogue naked. I'm not sure if that's a bad thing. I mean, in a scale of 1-5, rate how flustered the rogue gets when that happens. Does the nearby hapless guy/gal pass out from explosive nosebleed when nakedness ensues? I, for one, believe firmly that most games can be directly improved by adding some Ecchi comedy, just be sure everybody is on the same page beforehand.

BRB, writing some hot springs encounter tables.

Actions on the same initiative count happen simultaneously (with unpredictable effects!)

This is a relic from former editions, where, I believe (I never got the OD&D initiative rules right) what you described was in fact, canon.

[Koumei]

BRB, writing some hot springs encounter tables.

Pfft, been there, done that:

1: 1d6 Geisha
2: 3d6 Geisha
3: 2d6 Traditional Geisha (spoiler: men)
4: a Panda
5: Water Dragon, Angry
6: Kimono Dragon, acting like Geisha (worse than above)
7: 1d6 Samurai, confused about lack of Geisha
8: Kelpie (not the dog)
9: Drowned
10: 1d6 Steam Mephits
11: 3d6 Carp, boiled
12: 1d3 Dire Carp, boiled
13: Dragon Turtle, surprise!
14: Nymph (they're supposed to be water spirits, right?)
15: One of those frozen bastards from It's Hot Outside
16: Remorhaz (the actual heat source)
17: Linnorm (whichever one was described as making lairs under springs)
18: Steam Para-Elemental
19: 1d6 Nereid
20: Harem of Succubi (2d6 plus 1 Greater one from FCodex or a slutty looking Bebilith, your choice)

[Maxus]

Wouldn't that be a Babeilith then?


[now I have to go scrub my brain to remove the image of a slutty-looking bebilith]

[nockermensch]

BRB, writing some hot springs encounter tables.

Pfft, been there, done that:
20: Harem of Succubi (2d6 plus 1 Greater one from FCodex or a slutty looking Bebilith, your choice)

I fukken hope you meant a slutty MARIlith, because my body is not ready for a slutty huge demonic mantis shrimp.

But's a very nice table. I'll find an use for it.

[Guyr Adamantine]

*Stuff*

I'm all for it now, but we were what, 11? The DM's sexual awakening was manifesting in a really stupid fashion, especially if my characters were female. Especially irritating, since that my second character ever, and was still learning that whole "roleplaying" concept.

Also, I really dig that table. Will include hot springs in my future games.

[JonSetanta]

I made a house rule months ago, before a D&D variant playtest I was DMing, wherein Natural 1s do cause autofailure but nothing else bad.
No fumble. No dropped weapon. No missing turn.

In fact, you get an Action Point every time you roll 1, just like when you rest for the day.

Players were pleased.

slutty looking Bebilith

[TheFlatline]

Last, but not least:

All conversations must be in-character. If you must speak out of character, you must communicate entirely in hand gestures.

I played for years in an oWoD game where we were assumed to be in character at all times. If we were going to break character, we had a hand signal- Crossed fingers held up. It bled into the tabletop game from the LARP that had originated a lot of the NPCs.

It worked pretty well. It was basically a "time out" signal. However, someone throwing OOC meant the whole game stopped being IC and we handled it OOC. Not by hand gestures.

[Judging__Eagle]

I made a house rule months ago, before a D&D variant playtest I was DMing, wherein Natural 1s do cause autofailure but nothing else bad.
No fumble. No dropped weapon. No missing turn.

In fact, you get an Action Point every time you roll 1, just like when you rest for the day.

Players were pleased.

slutty looking Bebilith

As a karmic based Action Point system having 1's grant an Action Point on 1's (which result in a failure, not 1's that succeed); that would be remotely acceptable. Sure, you've botched, but you're a bit ahead on your karma.

[TheFlatline]

No teleportation through anti-magic fields. It's been a year and I still can't get over it.

This works perfectly fine if you believe teleport is more warp speed/hyperspace/Star Trek Transporter than folding space/wormhole/alternate dimension travel.

The metaphysics have to be established for teleporting but yeah I have no problem with this one. Hardly "the worst" house rule I've heard.

I've gotten to the point where natural 1 doesn't do jack sh*t. Once upon a time I used the houserule that natural 20 counted as 30 and natural 1 counted as -10, but I don't care any more. At most it'll be an auto-miss.

I think the worst minor houserule I ever saw was the craft skill being equivalent of the profession skill. Which sounds fine until you have shit like the master alchemist losing money by practicing his craft. At one point I illustrated by his houserule that I sold, in one month, one third of a health potion. Meanwhile, the bard is pulling in enough money to not need to adventure through his perform check.