Advanced Rules: House Rule Showcase

I didn't really talk about house rules themselves, just the concept. I had a few scant examples, but I skimmed past them because, as everyone knows, I'm trying to shy away from using a lot of examples. It's shorthand, and shorthand can be deadly if someone doesn't already know what you're talking about. Maybe this has merit, though. Maybe someone will benefit from my random assorted thoughts on alt rules, so today is going to be a mix of semi-related crap like the blog post equivalent of a junk drawer. Some discussion of good optional rules I like, some awful ones, and some (mostly sad) personal stories. Keep in mind that some of these discussions are going to be negative, so don't necessarily take something being here as an endorsement.

The Hand of God. Shadowrun 3rd Edition. Yeah, this is technically an optional rule. It's one of those things I can't imagine playing without. One time in the life of the character, if you're about to die, you blow your karma and your karma pool and fate gets you out of the situation. Notice how I said that: You're not just protected from dying. The GM can't just say something like "I've technically fulfilled the contract: Your character is alive, he's just in jail.". No. The rule states pretty clearly that you somehow get out of the situation. Shadowrun is a fair system, but it's deadly and unforgiving, so it's really nice to have this sitting around. 

Damage Stun in Mutants and Masterminds 2nd Edition. Okay, I fucking love this system but it does have some bumps. Well, one bump. One big fucking bump. It's the damage system. Basically, instead of hit points the game has a toughness save: You take someone's damage bonus, add fifteen, and roll. 15+bonus means you're more likely to fail, but that's by design since, well. they DID hit you. Failing by between 1 and 4  gives you a 'hit' that reduces further toughness saves. failing by five or more stuns you. Being stunned means you can't act, lose all of your dodge bonus to defense, and then take a further -2 to defense. Ten or more and you're both staggered and stunned. Fifteen or more and you're unconscious. The system is meant to simulate slowly getting hurt over a period of time, but also support things like a save being unbeatable...or un-failable. Both concepts are a staple of the Superhero genre. 

In case you didn't already notice, here's the problem. Crowd Control wins fights. Getting stunned means you're way more likely to take more damage next round. That means getting stunned again, which means taking more damage. This turns the game into a rocket-tag exercise of stacking initiative bonus, power attack and all-out attack to hit first and hit hardest. You can't even take an immunity to this stun because it's not a power effect. Despite the fact that Mutants and Masterminds functions best on a "Gentleman's Agreement" where nobody acts like a dickhead, this is something that either needs solved with a save DC or removed entirely. 

Background Skills, Pathfinder. Kait pointed this one out to me one day and I fucking love it. The D20 skill spread isn't that bad, but it's really undeniable that some skills just aren't that useful compared to others. Thinking strictly of your character's effectiveness, would you really choose ranks in craft or appraise over perception, or stealth? No, most of the time that people take skills like this, they're fleshing out their character. So, in comes Background Skills to remove the penalty of that: Everyone gets 2 ranks per level to put into a short list of skills defined as background skills. The full list is over here, but you can imagine what's on it: Appraise, Knowledge(Nobility), Sleight of Hand, Perform, et cetera. I just love shit that removes or mitigates the penalty of adding flavor to your character. Skill points are at a premium, and nobody should have to make that decision between cool stuff and more valuable skills. 

Sam's Advanced Rules. Usually when I tell you these horror stories, I'm happy with the outcome. They usually end with the bad situation being done in some way or the person being gone. Well, in this case that's still true, but I can't help but think the situation would have ended differently if I was there. Sam was a pot-addled older guy Dean, Jason and myself played tabletop stuff with. He was weird but fun and no, he never offered us any pot. I never even found out until years later in a "holy shit that makes a lot of sense" way. Even though I think he was just really cheap and stingy with his pot. Anyway, I had to do homework or some other dumb shit so Dean and Jason went over to play some Battletech. It's a dense, rich chess-style game when not paired with Robotech, and I kinda enjoy it. Our mechs had some customized weapons since Sam was fond of that and Dino had an "area of affect" weapon which you don't normally see in Battletech. Usually those are regulated to high-tonnage bombs dropped by Aerotech fighters or (I think) Long Tom cannons. He had a very high target number to hit someone, so he decided to target the square instead of the mech, which was a much lower target number but also meant he'd do way less damage. To Dino, it was more important to just put some damage out there as opposed to gambling on a hit.

Sam didn't like that. He got mad and said he didn't know they were using "Advanced Rules" and demanded to start the encounter over from the beginning. The guys left after that and we never played again. Your only happy end to this is that we made up years later but didn't resume any kind of gaming. This is a pretty sad one for me because I'm certain I could have talked Sam down(I had done it before), but I told you this story as kind of a cautionary tale. Make sure everyone's on the same page with the rules, and if you ever feel outsmarted...let it go. You're the GM, you can always do a harder encounter later. Petulant or angry behavior can lead to a broken group faster than you think.

Attacks of Opportunity. I thought I'd talk a little about the two biggest targets for house rules in my past. Attacks of Opportunity were a huge bear in the early days of 3.0 and for the life of me I can't figure out why. One day I'll crack open that book and really tear through the rules but I'm starting to think I was just surrounded by people who didn't want to think that much about gaming. I can tell you that, at the time, that was certainly true of some people. John would do little to no preparation for gaming and simply throw single large monsters at us, and then bitch about our CR because the man did not understand action economy. The only time we fought multiple foes, it was a punishment for asking, an act so stupid even he regretted it. Anyway, AoOs were a heavy target for removal, which changes the game's tone incredibly. It's not necessarily bad(Mutants and Masterminds removes them at base) but it's a massive change. People act super differently when they don't have to deal with positioning and it's not gonna be as simple as "This is complicated and haaaaard, let's remove it.". It's a deceptively huge and complex part of D20 that, yes, is very easy to understand. I'm sure part of the problem was people being very confident with the wrong information.

Skill synergies. This is the other one, and I'm much less forgiving of their removal. Several people constantly rode that train of calling them confusing and stupid, and always wanted to either remove them or replace them. Yeah, they were hard to look up or reference in 3.0, but 3.5 added a chart. You just have no excuse, there's a fucking chart. Removing them works(PF did) but removes some amount of planning that I liked. It made people want to branch out. As for replacing them? The alt rule usually brought up is SWD20's version where you ask for a synergy bonus and they're given based on the situation. This sounds great on paper and I even liked it at first, but it causes something very...stupid to happen that bogs the game down severely.

"Alright, it's going to be a DC 25 repair check to fix the engine."
"Does my knowledge of technology help?"
"No."
"Does my knowledge of computer use help?"
"No."
"Does my knowledge of appraisal help?"
"No."
"Does my knowledge of piloting star ships help?"
"No."
"..."

That just continues for like an hour every time someone wants to roll a check. It bogs the game down severely just like Call of Cthulhu's growth system and is worse in every way when compared to simply giving the players a little chart. Hell, even just removing them is better.

Karma Pool in SR3. In Shadowrun 3rd edition, metahumans are intended to have a smaller karma pool as an incentive to play a human. It raises by one every 20 karma instead of 10. Being an ork is only five points after all, so unless you're that biased against thick women(you heathen) then almost every build can spare it. At first our local group didn't understand and felt this was too harsh, so we removed it. Fifteen or twenty years later, I'm starting to understand why this is in place. Stat bonuses are pretty important, for both magic users who don't have good sources and for cyber types whose total limits are defined by the racial maximum times 1.5. Trolls, Orks and Dwarves all get bonuses to Body, which literally every build can use. So, I sort of see why they had a limiting factor beyond their mental statistics being lower. For the life of me, though, I can't figure out why elves have the same karma pool limit as trolls, orks and dwarves.

House Rules and You

"You are technically correct. The best kind of correct."


I have a complicated relationship with house or alternate rules. On one hand, they can make a game feel really different and can be a breath of fresh air. If a system gets stale, a game with a few alternate rules can be just what you need. On the other hand, this is the tool armchair developers use most often. Everyone knows how much I hate those guys by now. I've seen systems so fucked up by house rules that they were unrecognizable, like a burn victim.

Now, I know Wayne isn't reading this. We didn't really know each other that well. Just on the off chance he is, though? Don't take it personally, dude. We all make mistakes. Even gigantic abortions of good taste and game balance.

My point is, an armchair developer will eyeball a system, declare something "unbalanced" or wrong, and come up with a solution on the spot without thought to ramifications. The vast majority of the time, this is what's happening. No research, no testing, no nothing. They lazily wave their gold scepter and potentially fuck up the whole game. Often, players will just slump their shoulders and deal with it because they'd rather just game, even if it kind of sucks now. The same lazy armchair developers will jump to "Well, YOU run then." when challenged. Maybe that's just my experience. Laziness and demanding everyone do everything you want before you'll run probably go hand in hand, though.

Other times people won't research their decisions because of something everyone seems to despise, the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, Math. Lemme be clear on one thing: My experience with gaming as well as anyone who's known for being a "power player" like Dale, Mike, Maestro and Flux  is vastly different in part because I fucking love math. Mike's even got a B.S. in Mathematics, so I imagine he, at least, feels the same way. I love sitting down and figuring out the probability of something, or how valuable a particular ability is, or if a class REALLY performs as well as we think it does. Part of this is logical analysis(such as, applying the what's likely to happen in an average game) but a lot of this is math. People don't want to do it, so a solution or change is taken at first glance then never looked at again.

So yeah, before we get into the bullet pointy part of today's post, the advice is to never make a snap decision, and don't be bullheaded if something's not working out. Talk over rules changes with the group, and for God's sake, don't use alternate rules or house rules to try and balance the party. I've had people spring this on me in the past, and even under the guise of "finding new rules" in the books or "discovering" that "we were doing something wrong".

Ahem. That's the second piece of advice. House rules may be a viable way to repair a concept or rule in a game that's proven problematic, but in general changing the rules to try and balance the game better is a fool's errand. I promise you that, at best, the players will feel cheated and/or see you as a cheating jerk. At worst, your attempt to "balance the game better" will end in unintended consequences. Keep making house rules, and consequences will keep piling up. The rules of the game are an arbiter between the GM and the players, and not a tool for the GM to alter to his whim. Never forget that. The GM is allowed a certain amount of fudging, but he isn't allowed to alter the rules wholesale just to suit his needs. Doing so makes you look like you're just trying to "win" the game. That's not what house rules or alternate rules are for.

Here's a few things they ARE for.

Patching holes in systems. So yeah, every once in a while there will be a problematic rule. Either something is just bad and slipped through, or more likely something ends up abusable because of your group's play styles or current understanding of the rules. When altering a rule for this reason you really want to consult with the group and not act like the Grand Pontiff of Games. Come to a conclusion and fix the rule, but understand that this might end up being temporary as your group understands the system better. Other times, though, something's just out of place or highly abusable, like Mutants and Masterminds and its damage/stun rule. No amount of playtesting can find every single abusable thing in a system. I just firmly believe that it finds most of them.

Adding or Removing Complexity. So yeah, sometimes it's less that something is abusable and more that the group just doesn't want to deal with something. This can alter tone pretty heavily(see below) but sometimes a few tweaks or prepackaged alternate rules and speed up gameplay or remove complication. Even though they're easy to understand now, Attacks of Opportunity were a pretty popular target for these. So are skill systems, consolidating them further than PF or M&M does. Or, sometimes the group really wants something dense and slow and adding a few things to worry about is best. Of course, sometimes all you need to do is to find and apply some of the things you usually handwave. ECM/ECCM details, optempo, encumbrance, legality rules...there's a lot of things people skim past in even great systems.

Tone and Feel. I want you to consider this 90% of why you use alternate rules. Things like class defense bonus or armor as DR primarily alter the way a game feels before how it plays. Hero points or 4e's Second Wind system can easily be balanced around, but the players will act and feel differently. This can be the master stroke your game needs to get tone across. Ravenloft feels super different than 3.X because it has the players worrying about fear, madness, and the true intentions of people via moral alignment being undetectable. You could do that. Adding another layer to a game like presenting rules for downtime activities to consider can really hit home the tone of a themed game. Playing a bunch of gangers in Shadowrun is one thing, but having the players come together once a session to decide the direction of the gang and the assigned activities of the rest of the gang can really make them feel like leaders of a street gang. Craft carefully and discuss with the group and this could be the difference between a good game and an amazing success. Hell, if you're all getting sick of the same system but can't seem to agree on a new one, this could be a decent compromise.

So yeah, all in all I do have a love/hate relationship with alternate rules. They can be super cool, but 90% of the time when you meet one of those people determined to control every aspect of the game, they're going to be doing this shit over and over. I heavily recommend you stick to published alternate rules like the sort of thing you see in Unearthed Arcana, Pathfinder Unchained, or Shadowrun Companion. This is because they've ostensibly seen some sort of playtesting, and even if not, there's going to be less bias going in because nobody in your group created the rule. Nobody's going to be "attached" to them.

Source for the Common Man

"You will never understand how it feels to live your life / with no meaning or control and nowhere left to go."

This is more of an editorial. I feel like I got stuck in this rut where I thought I always have to help someone with my posts, and anything else was pointless or goofing off. Today I'm cutting myself a little slack and talking about something I've noticed in modern gaming source books and why I've turned around on the idea that you ought to make custom spells or equipment tough to get.

This started some years ago when I made a character named Seras Heartstring. I thought I'd challenge myself again so he was a warpriest of a god whose influence was love and fertility. He'd be a little different mechanically if I built him today (Don't try to do TWF with a 3/4ths AB class without stacking hitroll) but his personality was really fun. He was an Aasimar who could easily be mistaken for a woman, since I wanted to associate thematically with the fact that the Archangel Gabriel was described as being androgynous. Archangel, Aasimar, et cetera. He was kind of a promiscuous dumb blonde stereotype, but he'd wander around the countryside helping people out with spellcasting. He had a sincere love of people.

I started to wonder what kind of spells he'd be casting for common folk, and I came to the realization that a lot of the shit you'd ask a cleric of love and fertility for, they'd just have no spell for. Stuff like 'bless our marriage' or 'help me win that girl's heart' doesn't necessarily need a related spell and is just fluff(or social rolls), but 'help us conceive a child', 'make me more attractive' or 'bless this season's harvest' are all things that you'd go straight to a cleric of love and fertility for, and only one of those three has a real answer: the spell Plant Growth for harvesting food. In a world with real magic, I think you'd have to be real careful with doing non-magical blessings because you'd start to look like a con artist. Average Joe Farmer KNOWS spells exist even if he's never seen one, and if he pays you to perform a harvest blessing and he doesn't get much more food than last year, he's not going to be happy.

So a lot of different priesthoods simply lack the spells they'd realistically be asked to perform the most. Clerics of earth and stone reinforcing walls or building things. Clerics of the weather influencing seasons, priests of the community holding a magic fueled festival. All of these things are KIND OF possible using mid to high level magic. It's all high level, I want to add, because of the combat implications of casting them. Mages see this a lot too: Think of what you'd ask a Transmuter for. Immediately, I hope your mind went to stuff like plastic surgery. Now, it's POSSIBLE sure, by casting wish, polymorph any object, or permanency. Some ridiculous high level magic that's restricted because of what ELSE it does. If you wanted say, a version of disguise self or alter self that was permanent, you'd have to invent it. Even though it's the kind of thing people go into transmutation to learn.

It's got to be that the average pen and paper game's source is viewed through the lens of what an adventurer needs. Shadowrun makes this really obvious, with the lore even discussing cyberware or equipment that there aren't stats for. I remember mention of sexually-themed cyberware in lore, but... that could have been an Internet source book. My memory is swiss cheese. Regardless, it REALLY helps that Shadowrun's firearms and vehicle creation rules directly say that you're not necessarily creating something from scratch. The example vehicle created is even supposed to be a limited run vehicle, like a Delorean or Tesla Roadster. Even though the player "made it" from scratch.

I've even seen shades of this in other places of the rules. Survival in D20 lets you provide food for X number of people, and that's really all it says. It doesn't mention food preservation, even though that's what the average person is going to be doing when he rolls survival: trapping game, butchering it, cooking then saving the rest. Hell, it doesn't even mention what you're providing. It's got to be because they know this just ain't gonna come up in most games: most people are just going to roll and go "Okay, that's enough" then roll again tomorrow. Shadowrun has shades of this too, since there's no way in hell the future has abolished credit. 1st through 3rd edition don't mention it at all, while later editions just have some smart catch-all rules for taking out loans. I'm sure those are included for the theme of owing a huge amount of money to the mafia more than mortgages or car loans, though.

I mean, I'm not angry. I get it, there's only so many pages and including things that would realistically exist but don't have a lot of value to a basic adventurer is pretty pointless. Maybe magically giving the Orcish Chieftan's daughter huge knockers would get the player characters out of a really tough situation, but I just don't see the boob job spell REALLY coming up that much.

So what am I saying? Nothing really, this is an editorial. HA, I've wasted your time! But seriously, that was kind of the turning point for me on allowing custom source for fluff. I generally don't like homebrew source, and there's always an impulse to make people work to use even Shadowrun's various custom generation rules. Even though I've proven pretty strongly that none of SR's gen rules are anything but a load of fun, you still have this unmistakable feeling that they're important. Weighty.

But if it's harmless on the broad scale, I don't think I see a problem. Still keep balance in mind: I don't think even an inconsequential permanent effect would be lower than level two in 3.X or PF. Luckily for us, even PF has jumped on the guidelines bandwagon somewhere. Have them make a few checks, diplomacy to find the guy who casts it or Knowledge Arcana to create the spell or something. It could be a fun diversion. I just don't think allowing people to learn some fluff spells or buying some fluff magic items is the end of the world. Or, the guy who wants to blow 0.2 Essence on the Mr. Stud implant because he's a former porn star? Try not to bust his balls. I mean, busting his balls IS going to be a little harder seeing as how he's cybernetically enhanced them, but you get my point.