The Gaming Den

OK, I would stab myself repeatedly in the stomach if I was challenged to anything goes martial arts game design stomach stabbing, so when I am issued a challenge:

Oberoni wrote: Here's a challenge, then: Someone start up a thread asking us to compare commonly-used houserules, and see where it goes.

I accept it for new reason!

Here's my house rule:

Simulacrum: When you cast Simulacrum, you get the following, not a Simulacrum in the traditional sense.

Simulacrum
Medium Construct
Hitdice: 10d10+20 (75 hp)
Init: +2 (+2 Dex)
Speed: 30 ft., Swim 30 ft.
AC: 20 (+2 dexterity, +2 natural, +4 chain shirt, +2 shield), Touch 12, Flat-footed 18
Base Attack/Grapple: +7/+9
Attacks: Longsword +9/+4
Face/Reach: 5 ft./5 ft.
Damage: Longsword d8+2
Special Attacks: Spell-like abilities
Special Qualities: Impersonate, Recall.
Saves: Fort +3, Ref +5, Will +7
Abilities: Str 14, Dex 14, Con -, Int 14, Wis 14, Cha 14
Skills: Bluff +17 (+27 to act as target), Diplomacy +19, Disguise +19 (+29 as target), Gather Information +15, Listn +15, Sense Motive +15, Spot +15, Use Magic Device +15
Feats: Iron Will, Combat Expertise, Actor, Jack of All Trades
Climate/Terrain: Any.
Organization: Usually Solitary.
CR: 9
Treasure: Standard.
Alignment: Always Neutral
Advancement: -

Simulacrum are created with powerful illusion magic. Using a pile of snow, the illusionist creates a construct which magically impersonates another creature. The illusionist must supply a piece of the body of the creature to be impersonated (such as a drop of blood or a lock of hair).

Simulacrum can be made of anyone, the sample simulacrum is a copy of a sergeant in a human army. The Simulacrum always obeys its creator in all things, but has no special telepathic linkage to its caster or to anyone else.

Combat:
Tactics Round-by-Round:
Simulacrum are spies, not warriors, and fall back on trickery when exposed.
* Round 0: Simulacrum usually try to gain the loyalty of as many bystanders as possible, long before combat would begin. The Simulacrum operates continuously under Misdirection, and thus cannot be found out by anything as simple as low-level detection spells.
* Round 1: Cast greater shadow conjuration to produce evard's black tentacles. This spell takes effect immediately.
* Round 2: Cast greater shadow evocation to reproduce a wall of force and run away.
* Round 3: Become invisible.

Spell-like abilities (Sp): At will: ghost sound, silent image, unnerving gaze; 3/day: misdirection, hypnotic pattern, invisibility, illusory script, major image; 2/day: greater shadow conjuration, shadow conjuration, rainbow pattern, shadow evocation; 1/day: greater shadow evocation, false sending, false vision, phantasmal killer, shades. Caster level is 10, saves are Intelligence based.

The sample Simulacrum has a save DC of 12 + spell level for its spell-like abilities.

Impersonate (Su): The Simulacrum looks and acts almost exactly like the creature who it is created to look like. While its true form is merely a formed lump of snow, it gains a +10 bonus to disguise and bluff checks to appear and behave as the target. Even magical effects can be fooled into belieing that the Simulacrum is actually the creature it is impersonating.

Recall (Su): Some of the memories of the original are gained by the simulacrum. The simulacrum is considered to have 2 ranks in any knowledge, profession, or craft skill possessed by the original. The simulacrum also has all of the weapon and armor proiciencies of the original. In addition, the Simulacrum is able to "remember" routines performed by the original to a limited extent. The Simulacrum knows enough to refer to everyone by the right names, never get lost in the target's house, and even say the proper passwords to get into the target's personal things, if necessary.

Skills and Feats: Simulacrum have skills and feats as if they were bards.

creating a simulacrum: A prospective illusionist must have a piece of the person of the creature to be immitated, a lab, one week to work on it, a pile of snow and the simulacrum spell. The ritual costs 1,000 XP. The simulacrum is created naked, and someone must provide clothing and equipment for it unless it is intended to mimic someone very unuasual indeed.

-Username17

Screw the XP cost. Just put a set limit on how many you can cast at once (I recommend some low number like 1/2 caster level or something).

These are only true for the Games I GM

Getting raised from death by any means does not slap you with a permanent XP penalty.
Instead you have to endure one single session of having a negative level.

Everybody, always and under every circumstance, gets the same amount of XP.

Some feat changes I use.

Dodge: +1 dodge bonus to AC, period.

Mobility: +4 dodge bonus to AC versus all AoOS.

Combat Reflexes: Grants a -10 penalty to any enemy trying a tumble check in your threatened area.

Save feats (Great Fort, iron will, etc.): +3 bonus instead of +2

Natural spell: banned.

OK, I don't think that's a common houserule though.

Here's some I think are so common that most people don't even know they're houserules:

1. Using Ride-By-Attack, a character can continue moving after making a charge attack even if the target is directly in front of the charging character.

2. Sneak attack works in "natural" concealment if it's less than total. IOW, you can sneak attack in a dark alley that isn't in total darkness. However, magical concealment like Blur still defeats a Sneak Attack.

3. Small characters can Sneak Attack Large and Huge characters without having to fly or make an obscene jump check.

4. Wizards can find blank spellbooks whenever they need them.

5. You get all spells back as soon as you wake up from 8 hours or so of sleep - immediately.

6. You don't get fatigue unless it's important to the adventure, or is granted by a spell or ability that somebody uses.

7. There is no such thing as encumbrance once you have magical armor and the party has at least one bag of holding, magic backpack, portable hole, or similar item.

8. You don't keep track of purchases less than one gold piece, or of normal living expenses.

9. Polymorph lets a small creature turn into a large or huge creature, and lets a huge creature turn into a small creature (that's how I read the rule, but even people who read it differently use this as a houserule almost all the time).

10. If a cat (or small child) takes a die before it stops spinning or rolling, whatever comes up when the cat (or small child) stops playing with the die is the result, even if you were sure it was going to be a natural 20 before the interference.

11. If the DM is getting a little tipsy and it's late, he doesn't have to look up any rules as long as the party doesn't get totally screwed by the call.

OK, that's the way you want to do it.

1> The "Composite Longbow" and the "Longbow" are the same weapon for purposes of weapon proficiencies and focus and suchnot.

2> Material Components don't exist.

3> People can multiclass into and out of any class they want and pay no XP for doing so.

4> Alignment restrictions are removed on Monks and Bards.

5> As soon as the enemy party comes into your field of view, everybody gets to make a single spot check against the lowest hide check of the opposing party, everyone who passes gets to act on the first round of combat.

6> The first round of combat is just a normal combat round - no "surprise round" partial action shit.

7> Restrictions on when you can hide are as per 3e. That is, concealment and cover grant you bonuses to your hide check, and you don't get to automaticaly spot anything.

8> If your die rolls under the furniture, you have to reroll, even if it was a 20.

9> Saves do not automatically fail on a 1.

-Username17

Here are a couple I know I use and I've heard a LOT of people use.

1) Weapon proficiency feats (and for focus and specialization) is in vague groups like "all axes" "all bows" etc... Weapon finese is all weapons (did they actually change to that in 3.5? I forget).

2) Any attack roll that hits and is a critical threat is a critical hit, no roll for confirmation.

Note that the first is less a balance thing and more a utility thing. And the second is less a balance thing and more just a stupid thing...

Which is why pretending a standardized set of house rules exist that "everyone" uses because they automatically fix balance problems with the raw is dumb.

I mean really we just don't like to roll confirmations for crits. So we don't. Many people don't. And god knows what it does to balance because we never checked. So should THAT go into the idealized uniform "better than raw" rules set people should assume exists and talk about instead of the raw?

PL wrote:I mean really we just don't like to roll confirmations for crits. So we don't. Many people don't. And god knows what it does to balance because we never checked. So should THAT go into the idealized uniform "better than raw" rules set people should assume exists and talk about instead of the raw?

OK, here's what it does:

Normally, when you roll a threat, you then have to roll to-hit again for confirmation. This means that your chance of getting a critical per hit:

(Your Threat Range) / (Your Chance to-Hit) * (Your Chance to-hit) /20

So what this does is cancels the chance to-hit out of the equation and replaces it with a denominator of 20. So a Longsword criticals exactly twice as often as an axe, and since it does xactly half as much extra damage on a crit - it's balanced.

And the point at which it is balanced is that every weapon does .05*(Your Threat Range)*(Your Crit Multiplier-1) extra damage per hit on a crit.

---

What you are looking at instead is your chance to crit per hit:

(Your Threat Range) / (Your Chance to-Hit)

And that means....

If you hit on a 18-20, you score extra damage 2/3 of the time with a Longsword, and only 1/3 of the time with a Battle Axe. And the Longsword is still inflicting half the bonus critical damage that the Battle Axe is. So those two weapons are still balanced against each other.

But... the extra critical damage in this case is:

1 / (Your Chance to-Hit) * (Your Threat Range) * (1-Your Crit Mod)

And that means...

That the bonus critical damage is not static relative to your total output. In fact, it means that the less chance you have of striking, the more extra critical damage you do relatively to your total output.

---

In short:

Before you were better off switching from a Battle Axe to a Heavy Pick if you inflicted an average of 22 or more points of damage (11 if you have access to Keen Edge).

Now... you are better off switching based on what number you are going to hit on:

To-hit / Average Damage to encourage switching to Pick
20+ / 3 (less thn the average damage of a Pick)
19+ / 4
18+ / 5
17+ / 6
16+ / 7
15+ / 8
14+ / 9
13+ / 10
12+ / 11
11+ / 12
10+ / 13
9+ / 14
8+ / 15
7+ / 16
6+ / 17
5+ / 18
4+ / 19
3+ / 20
2+ / 21

And, of course, if you have access to Keen Edge, half all those numbers.

-Username17

We use action points, a mixture from Unearthed Arcana and Eberron.

Eberron basically took the idea of action points from UA and trimmed it down a bit, and made them refresh every level so you couldn't accumulate a huge pool of them like you could per UA. We use the quantity per level from Eberron, and the combined list of uses from Eberron and UA.

We've also disallowed auto-success and failure on saves and attack rolls on natural 1's and 20's. Instead, you roll again, with a minus or plus 20 (respectively) to the following roll. The idea is that if you have an attack bonus good enough to hit with a neg 20 to your attack, then you can still hit anyway.

Personally, I've errata'ed polymorph in my games to "Polymorph into {specific creature}", and removed Shapechange from the game altogether. I'm more inclined to balance overpowered spells by nixing them, rather than trying to devise ways for everyone to try to combat them.

some key spell nerfs.

Teleport: Casting time 10 minutes. Only goes to fixed points. Regular teleport goes from point to point, greater teleport goes from anywhere to any point. Characters can create new points by paying 2,000 gp and a week of crafting.

Polymorph/Shapechange: Polymorphed people cannot use magical equipment at all. if you use a suit of magical armor or a magic weapon, it has no enhancement bonuses. Similarly all other bonuses from items or other buff spells become null and void while polymorphed. In this manner it also neutralizes previous castings.

Polymorph any object: banned.

Greater magic weapon/ magic vestment: Increases enhancement bonus on a magical item by +1, or creates a +1 item. multiple castings don't stack.

Gate: travel spell only.

Planar Binding: Bargaining is a social encounter, not a die roll. Actually social skills don't really exist at all anyway, so you dont' get ridiculous terms of service.

Contingency based effects: Must be based on something happening to you, whether by the environment, gravity or an opponent.

"We've also disallowed auto-success and failure on saves and attack rolls on natural 1's and 20's. Instead, you roll again, with a minus or plus 20 (respectively) to the following roll. The idea is that if you have an attack bonus good enough to hit with a neg 20 to your attack, then you can still hit anyway."


I've heard of this one before, but never played with it. Seems to make sense to me.

It works much better in a d6 or even d10 based system than a d20 system, where it basically still equates to an auto-success or failure.

But let me tell you, it *really* sucks when you roll a 20 and still don't hit.

We don't play with that stupid rule about PRC prereqs from CW.

Here's another one designed to fix the awful falling object rules.

Falling Object Damage Rules: If an object is dropped/thrown on a target, and the objects damage is determined by its weight, it may be avoided with a successful reflex save. The DC is determined by what threw the object. If the object was dropped via a telekinesis spell, then use the spell's normal DC. If the object was thrown by a character like a hulking hurler, then the DC is 10 + 1/2 the character's level. If a trap did so, then the trap's normal DC applies. If none of the above apply, like a druid using wildshape to try to drop on a foe, use a base DC of 10. A successful save negates all damage.