Best 3.X house rules

[ckafrica]

I'm looking at getting a new campaign up and running and I'm wondering, other than Tomes, what house rules you use and why you like them.

One I like is PCs roll most of the dice.

Instead of saves and attacks from the monsters, I get PCs to roll their DC and AC as a bonus +d20 against a fixed save and BAB 10+modifiers from the baddies. I find this keeps the players more involved during the monster turns and prevents them from being able to make any claims that I'm fudging.

[the_taken]

I once considered having the number of bonus skill points be based upon all your attributes, but the extra skill points could only go towards a skill that used that attribute. That is, your strength bonus gave you X skills points which you could allocate towards strength based skills (Climb, Jump, Swim, Intimidate) but couldn't go towards dexterity based skills (Balance, Tumble, Escape Artist). Skill points from class levels went towards any class skill, and a single skill point bought a single rank.

This made characters a lot more versatile in their niche, but didn't help to diversify them at all. Fighters were still only good at climbing, and still didn't have a social skill as CHA was often a dump stat. Also, I noticed that many attributes had very few skills tied to them (Constitution?).

[tussock]

PHB plus one book per character. PHB+1, if you will. You can only construct the items in your DMG+1, though may find and use any. Encounters too, from the DM.

One Prestige class max per character. Three classes of any type max per character.

No bonus spells for stats (+2 1st level only instead).

Clerics spont their domains, not cure spells. Turning can cure/cause wounds. Ban divine metamagic.

Recover all cantrips/orisons with 10-minutes rest.

Full attack as a standard action for melee only.

Roll your stats (organic) like a Real Man(TM),

All races get +2/-2 wherever they please. Elves have (for example) max 20 Dex and max 16 Con. Add extra +2/-2/-2 to suit, for building Ogres and such. Throw out level adjustments, buy powerful race abilities with feats.

E6, so the world plays out like a high-fantasy castles-and-armies game. Slightly offensive, but capstone feats and high-level spells as rituals help. Keeps the monster manual in play forever, saves work on NPCs.

Better save progressions. Like +1/level, +2 if it's a good save for any class. On-the-fly, add half a monster's CR to it's saving throws.

Use modules and encounters as if your PCs were 2 levels lower. Slows advancement, makes the fights quick, helps sub-optimal characters, gives more treasure. Try to avoid using opponents with an individual CR or level higher than the highest level PC, and never use higher level spellcasters. You'll get through much more action in a night, less glass-cannon play.

Stone-weight encumbrance.

Random items in the magic-mart. Ban healing wands.

Retraining at level up.

Polymorph gives you the MM entry (less Sp and Su). MM3 counts as your character's +1 book. Haste from 3.5, stat buffs from 3.0. All "1 per-level" durations are +4. So 1 hour per level at 20th level is 24 hours, and 1 round per level at 1st level is 5 rounds.

No wealth per level, all new PCs start with 1st level gps. Loot the dead.

No loops. A -> B -> A does not happen, ever. Gold buys a Wall of Iron, so a Wall of Iron cannot buy gold. No wishes from a wish. No gates from a gate. No PPs from PPs. No spells from spells. Only the clearest exemptions may apply.
Specifically, summoning a spellcaster with a spell cannot get you spells, though you may hand it a wand or scroll.

[Josh_Kablack]

PHB plus one book per character.

I'm with tussock on this one at least.

I'm pretty fond of the "we're using Core*, plus each player gets to bring in one book of their choice to use in building their character. All players may use material from any book that any player brought in." In practice it serves as a reasonable way to allow players to build their favorite types of characters while keeping the number of books needed to a manageable level. It also has the side effect of having the players with more encyclopedic rules knowledge trying to sell the newer players on just why they should bring in a certain book, and that tends to improve the newer players' understanding of the rules material.

*or Tome, or other MC-defined narrow starting ruleset.


Otherwise, I am very much in favor of any sort of houserule to reduce (unintentional) lethality. This can be achieved by having all weapons default to non-lethal damage and imposing the -4 penalty for lethal damage, or it can be achieved by extending the death threshhold below -9, or it can be achieved by handing out luck points, or in other ways.

[Red_Rob]

Here are some we have been using:

0 level spells cast as a swift action. Means they actually get used now and again.

Any effect which causes death directly (rather than through ability damage, hp loss etc.) takes players to -1hp and bleeding.

Death Threshold is -10hp per level, however failing 3 stabilization rolls in a row means you die.

[Ferret]

Lots of things to help Fighters specifically:

Full attack is a standard action for Fighters.

Fighter weapon-class damage bonuses (add FTR level to damage starting at 1 for a subset of weapons)

Attack of Opportunity halts movement if it deals damage. Feats available to abort inbound Grapple/swallow whole/etc checks with successful attacks.

Fighters get a low-level save vs. nauseated (single target) save vs. stun (single target) a bit later. Save vs. stun (multi target shout/kiai/fart/whatever) around 10ish, CdG as a standard action around same level. Save vs Death later.

Fighters control the things he can REACH. Wizards control things OVER THERE.

[TOZ]

No alignment. If you need to determine an effect based on alignment, use Neutral unless the subject has an aura or subtype.

Save/BAB progressions stack for determining total bonus. (Effectively fractional bonuses) No multi-class madness.

Minimum 4 skill points per level.

No XP. Group decides on a leveling schedule.

[Miryafa]

Use CON instead of CHA for feats and abilities for melee classes - the Tomes should reduce MAD, not encourage it (and generally do, except for feats and magic items).