The Gaming Den

So, my DM is incredibly well-versed in the d20 systems. But when he runs the solo Pathfinder campaign we're running, he uses bits from 3.5, bits from Pathfinder, and bits that he and his friends have made up. And sometimes I swear he makes stuff up on the fly.

He's slowly writing down all of his houserules... but honestly, I think that once it gets to a certain point, he's written his own VERSION of the game, rather than just tweaking it. It makes it near impossible to just read the material without asking if he accepts this or that.

He doesn't use LA; instead he homebrews racial levels. He doesn't use flaws or traits, and fiddles with the feats. I don't really mind but sometimes I wish I could figure out what game he was playing. *sigh*

Does there come a point at which houserules and homebrew turn into a different system? If so, what's critical mass?

Is he writing his own classes, prestige classes, and monsters? If so that may be it

Critical mass for me is more than ~30 non-simple changes to the game. A simple change is "no Divine Metamagic" or "gnomes are good at enchantments, rather than illusions". A non-simple change is "the druids animal companion has +2 HD, but -2 to attack", or "Polymorph does X", or "the grapple rules work as follows..."

There are certain aspects of a system that could be termed 'fundamental'. If these remain intact, all that you're doing is houseruling. If these do not, then you're not houseruling, you're creating a new system based on that one. While there is some overlap between the two, it's usually well-delineated.

For example, if you changed any of the following things about 3.5 DnD, you'd be changing the system fundamentally, and thus, really creating your own system inspired by 3.5:

- Using a different method of resolution to the d20
- Removing all spell levels from the game
- Changing injury resolution away from HP

...and so on. The easiest 'water test' is 'Are monsters useable against these characters as they had been before without alteration?' If the answer is 'No', then the system has been altered fundamentally.

Flaws are an obscure and incredibly unbalanced optional rule. I have never been in a game where flaws were used. And I don't expect to.

-Username17

Really, Frank? Half the games I've been in since UA came out have used flaws. No, really.

Whatever, though. For my part, the critical mass is reached when an adventure or party with the house rules is no longer comparable without.

For example, introducing a few of the RoW classes to the game doesn't significantly alter the expectations of the game. Adding all of the tomes, however, does alter the way the game works, since it changes basic assumptions of competency and of what is possible in the system.

Flaws are unbalanced from the standpoint of actually countering the extra feats you get. However, they're fine if you just want to give everyone a couple extra feats and some interesting quirks, which is what I've seen them used for.

Basically, every game 3.5 or later is basically a jumble of house rules.

The balance goes out the window when the adventure is self written; there are many rules from the books were are contradicting or do the opposite of what they say... And just look at the skill challenges from 4e; no two people apparently read them as doing the same thing, whether they 'say' it works or not.

So yeah, maybe you don't know quite what game you're playing. But if at least you know what options you have - or can ask for them either by book or by GM, isn't that what matters?

-Crissa

Every game I've played since UA came out that wasn't a Tome game used flaws.

Honestly though, every game with flaws would have been better if they just gave everyone 3 feats at level 1.

The actual flaw parts are not real at all, and if it's a tome game, then it's dealing with shit feats at some point, whether it's the DFA that wants Steadfast Determination but needs Endurance, or the Wizard that needs Iron Will as a pre-req.

I can't really remember any game, any system, that I played which hasn't had house rules. Sometimes we knew they were house rules, sometimes we didn't.

And then there were "gentlemens' agreements" like not using X, Y or Z (over much), whihc had effects akin to house rules.

There are a few created classes, and the Monk and a couple others are totally redesigned (but who's going to complain about that?), but for the most part, it's just little tweaks.

I just wish I could review it visually; I don't remember things I've been told out loud unless I have a chance to see it in print.

Okay, one DM liked to play with all sorts of experimental rules for different games, usually campaign-specific ones. In one, he wanted to replicate Arcanum. So, technological items all had a rating, and you had a Tech rating equal to all of them added up, plus your ranks in Know: Engineering.

You also had a Magic rating equal to your Know: Arcana, Spellcraft, casting stat (yes, for Int casters you're getting Int mod * 3 here) and the number of daily spell slots (or maybe even spell levels) you have, all added up.

And if your Magic rating is too high, you can't use technological devices but are all but immune to them. And likewise for a high Tech rating and magic. As a half-elf Beguiler, my Magic Rating was such that I couldn't use a crossbow, but was actually immune to being shot by even a bow, and even swords had a chance of breaking against me. Our party ended up being very high in Magic rating - but we had a half-ogre in the party who could break people in half without spells, so if we fought tech-people, we were immune to them and the ogre could still break them, meaning the only real enemies were casters.

Anyway, that wasn't the only change. He also added the backgrounds from Arcanum. And yes I did take the "you were sick as a child, and a miraculous surgery saved your life. -4 from Str, Dex and Con due to atrophy and illness, +4 to Int, Wis and Cha due to all that time reading in bed." Seriously, who the fuck starts with 22 Int on LA +0?

Level 5 was: CL 5, +6 Int (casting stat), +14 Know: Arc, +16 Spellcraft, +20 spells per day = 61 before magic items (I think I swindled a headband of Int +2 at that stage, bumping it up by +3 and possibly the CL of the item as well). And that is basically equal to "Not Spell" Resistance 61. At level 5. Although the backpack I wore might have subtracted 1 or 2 from the total there.

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Oh, and another DM wanted to change... pretty much everything, actually. Some weren't too bad (giving fighters interesting feats that let them do some really useful stuff), others could have really caused problems (Clerics cast "at will", but roll d% each time. They need to roll under "100-(spell level+1)^2" or the spell fails. Each time you cast, you subtract that number from the 100, so casting 3 level 1 spells means you need less than 96, 92 and 88 respectively. There's a You-Must-Take-This feat that adds +20 to your Favour pool each time. He was thinking "this will be good at low levels" and never thought that 9th level spells would kick in at 100 points apiece.)

Oh, and the spell points. Sorcerers could burn XP ((spell level + 1)^2*10) to learn new spells, and had MP to cast spells (this pool is worked out so that they could cast the exact same number of spells of equal level as a normal Sorcerer, but gives them the option of wasting them on millions of low level ones, or just letting off a handful of high power ones... and with no metamagic cap). It follows a basic system of (spell level*2)+1 points. I was quick to pick up Scorching Ray and metamagic spells, so that if needed a level 5 character could whip out an Empowered Split Ray Twinned Scorching Ray for an expensive 21 points, handing out 24d6 damage. It never came up.