House Rules?

Just thought it would be interesting to hear everybody else's. Maybe I'll draw some inspiration from them. Note- We play a fairly high powered game. I'm not looking to start any arguments about whose rules are right, wrong or silly. If it works for you then it's good, right?

Some of mine:
-A roll of 20 doesn't require confirmation.

-Low level spellcasters can use their higher level bonus slots to cast lower level spells until that spell level becomes available.

-No Cross Class Skills.

-We stack a lot of things that shouldn't stack, but by no means everything.

-Sounds stupid, but know your abilities. When you're doing something like casting a spell, using a feat or special ability etc., if you can't tell me what it does, it does nothing. A tad harsh, but it has tremendously sped up combat.

- Wealth guidelines are GUIDELINES. Magic shops that sell anything worth more the 2-4,000gp are rare, as is the wizard willing to give up hard earned xp for cash. I just don't think anyone should be able to plan what items their character will buy every level because they have easy access to abundant magic shops overflowing with goods and know to the copper how much money they'll have at every level.....OK that's more of a playstyle thing than a house rule, but it's my thread. Just say no to cookie cutters

-Had to make this one mainly for 1 guy...If you pick up a die before I can see what it was, it was a 1.

-If you have Power Attack, you can use it with any weapon.

-Death at negative 10+ Con modifier.

-No level cap for spell damage.

-Feats are gained at every odd level.

- HPs roll 2 dice and take the best.

- The Intimidate skill can be modified by Str or Chr, depending on how you're trying to intimidate someone.

-If you say it, you do it. The exception is if you're tugging on your earlobe while you say it....That means it's out of character....inside joke.....very long story.


That's all I can think of at the moment. I'll be playing tomorrow, so I'm sure another couple or so will come to light. In the meantime, post yours so we can all steal 'em for our campaigns!!!

I only have a couple:

As you: No confrim on natural 20
Only the PC leader can give ideas as what another PC can do during the game.
All dice rolls are done one by one.

Everybody gets one bonus feat. So humans start with 3 feats. Cause humans get the short end of the stick in my opinion.

I played with 3 different DMs and they all nevder had us confirm crits.

OK, I haven't DMed in a while, but after playing with some really good folks, and getting my own campaign world in the works, I've been adapting/using their rules to suit how I'm going to play. Along with some stuff that carried over from when I used to DM.

-Confirm crits, however, even if you miss the confirm, it still does max damage without a multiplier. If you confirm, you roll the multiplier and add strength twice. I think it reflects the fact that 20 is a solid hit, in a bad place to be hit, and the farther you get from 20, the less solid of a hit it's going to do. Thanks, J-dawg.

-I have a list of spells you can critical, due to the fact that if you're rolling to hit, there's a chance you could hit someone in the arm or the face, and I don't think both should do the same damage. I may change it to max damage instead of double, but I'm not quite sure.

-If it falls on the floor, you have 5 seconds to tell me whether you're going to use it or reroll. This is because I've had people roll onto the floor and another player gesture a thumbs up or down or something similar. It ended up being a slight problem with crucial rolls, so I just made this rule up and tell everybody beforehand. Oh, and if you break eye contact, and look at the floor, I don't care if you're legally blind, you still have to reroll. But I usually use this one with a lot of lenience, depending on the people playing.

-If you're a wizard, cast a spell, and roll the wrong dice, (I provide and sometimes even fill out the spellbooks given to my players, so when they don't use them, I get upset.) you have to roll a dice one category weaker than what's listed. If it's an honest mistake, and they are new and can't pick out a D8 from a D10 in the dark like a lot of us probably can, I cut them some slack, but otherwise, use the stuff I give you :)

I have a few others, but I used to DM in 2nd, so I don't know what's rules and what's homebrew anymore Let me look through them (I have them written down somewhere. And I'm usually not harsh with people who haven't played before or haven't played with me before even. I just get frustrated when I've been playing with you for a month, you've had that same spell for a month, you have it on a sheet in front of you, no digging in the book required, and you still roll the wrong dice.

I really like the above rules though, they sound really fun. I should come up with a signal for OOC talk. Like, dropping your pants or smashing a beer bottle over your head.

heh-heh.

I posted in a similar thread on the WotC boards and several heads exploded.

In short, for the homebrew that I'm working on there are for PC races:
Humans
Dwarf (no sub-races)
Duergar
Elf (so sub-races)
Drow
Homebrew race (beastmen)
Graveborn (variant of Warforged)
Hobgoblin (maybe)

The only classes are out of the Player's Handbook, I haven't decided whether or not to allow the DM's Guide Premiere Classes.

I'm leaning toward the no-confirmation of criticals.

Oh, and no Orcs, Half-Elves, Half-Orcs, Halflings or Gnomes.

My homebrew world has no elves....well, they're there if you knew where to look, but they were abandoned by their gods(long story)and in turn abandoned the affairs of mortals. I like the idea of the graveborn, but I have an undead fetish. Would love to see what you've done in that regard.

I tend not to ban books wholecloth, but rather to evaluate each feat/PrC on it's own merits (or lack thereof) though this may change. I definitely wouldn't allow much outside the DMG and PHB if I was with a new group.

Exploding heads are why I rarely, if ever, post on Wizards boards. Heck, I got flamed very harshly in my first post ever there for suggesting using small circumstance bonuses on die rolls to encourage role-playing. Pretty much soured me there right away.

Graveborn/Graveforged:

Most of what I've got is conceptual. In the homebrew, there's The Necropolis. It houses the souls of the departed. From time to time, the Master of the Necropolis (a quasi-god while within The Necropolis) summons souls back to perform tasks or allows souls with unfinished business a chance to complete it.

If the Master leaves The Necropolis, he/she uses a Graveforged shell to travel and keeps a shell in most major cities on the world.

I haven't really worked out much in the lines of mechanics, I'll need to actually get a sourcebook with the Warforged in it before I can decide what I'm keeping/getting rid of out of their background.

All i want to know more about is these Exploding Heads you guys are talking about...is there alot of Brains flying around?? How do exploding heads affect your emotional status? jeez ...i'd better get some sleep i guess....LOL

For all the explosions, you'd think there would be some brains, but there's typically not.

There's a whole lot of My D&D is better than your D&D though. Man, is there a lot of that. It's a bit disappointing, really. On the whole, RPGers tend to be a bit brighter than average, but if what is on the WotC board is an indication...

RE: Graveborn/Graveforged
Oh, and I didn't explain that the souls that the Master of Necropolis sends back are the Graveborn/Graveforged. There's still a lot more work I have to do on them before I'm ready to declare them "fit".

I tend to prefer "My D&D is different than your D&D and that's the way it's supposed to be." That doesn't seem to be too popular there, though.

Good points about the Wizards boards. One of my favorite posts all time there was on a thread where people were supposed to be statting themselves as characters. One guy says, "using the 10 points of I.Q. per point of intelligence statndard, I have a 19."
At the time, no one even questioned him on it.

Sounds like some cool stuff...I'm looking forward to seeing where you take it.

Our house rules:

No evil characters. Period.
No hp rolls of 1's will be counted.
Rerolls (fate points) - 1 per character per session (cannot be saved). Additional points may be awarded for good role-playing, particularily dangerous quests, etc.
We confirm crits.
Using only PHB, MM & DMG - until this fall, when we start FR - feats have been listed, any not on there will be on a case-by-case basis.
When possible, avoid munchkin-type behaviour.