What house rules do you use and WHY?
thanks for the info in advance
So, basically, to play a Paladin, you have to convert ALL the powers that are Melee Weapon to Strength. Basically, nobody in our games play those classes much anyhows, so not a huge problem, but if someone is pondering between 2 different classes, chances are, that rule simplifies the choice. And oddly enough, this rule went into play because a Player wanted to play a Paladin, but couldn't believe (thematically) that his attacks weren't based on his Strength. It only became "official" when Swordmages came into being... Intelligence to hit made that decrepit old-man a sword-saint. :P
Oh... and he's very picky on races. Deva, Giths, Shards, etc, not allowed. Most are, we have grey elves (eladrin), elves, dwarves, dragonborn, even a Gnome and Half-Orc, but if he gets a bad vibe about a race, can't play it. :P
That sounds pretty harsh 
Houserules in my game.. Expertise feats you get as a bonus at fifth level.
You don't track arrows, rations, water, etc. I assume you purchase them. If they become a plot point, I will inform you of it and we'll deal with it then.
You are assumed to carry anything that is really cheap and makes sense for your character to have, no need to put it on your sheet. If it's questionable I'll let you roll to see if you have it. The definition of "really cheap" varies as you gain levels; if you are 20th level a basic healing potion is considered "really cheap" too.
If you come up with a convicing description, I'll come up with a mechanic. You can try anything, but not everything will work. If it's cool and fitting your character, I'll give you a bonus.
The other stuff is more about the world fluff, and less mechanical... so not really useful to add here.
scribe from book to book costs 20% o' market price in ritual components. the cost of buying a book from a magic shop is still market price so that the store is making a profit.
scribe from book to scroll costs 20% o' market price in ritual components. cost of buying a scroll from a magic shop is still market price so that a store can make a profit.
selling found, scribed, or stolen scrolls: opening bid is likely to be 80% o' market price to attract buyers that might want the discount, but will still bring a bit of profit to the PC selling.
copying scrolls or rituals using Amaneusis costs 20% o' market price and cost of casting Amaneusis.
learning ritual occupies 4x casting time up to 8 hours in heroic, 16 in paragon, etc. thus, Pyrotechnics takes 4 minutes to learn as it takes 1 minute to cast. Tenser's Floating Disc takes 40 minutes to learn as it takes 10 minutes to cast.
scribing takes 8x casting time up to 16 hours in heroic, 32 in paragon, etc. thus scribing a scroll of Pyrotechnics takes 8 minutes to scribe, TFD takes 80 minutes to scribe. Caster may choose to expend ritual components required to cast while scribing for convenience. While a scroll takes longer to scribe, it is faster to cast, so having scrolls prepped is a worthwhile idea if time is of the essence.
Declared rule for all that are new to the game:
Passive Percept and Passive Insight is similar to taking a 10 at all times; however, Active use of those skills will result in increased clues and such even if you roll lower than passive because you are actively looking for something and are looking for something specific.
Declared rule for large groups:
All knowledge skills gain Passive status at times designated by DM to reduce rolls. When there is a large group, skipping some of the monster knowledge rolls and other knowledge rolls helps the game move smoother.
recent alteration to the ritual scribing rules and scroll copying rules:
scribe from book to book costs 20% o' market price in ritual components. the cost of buying a book from a magic shop is still market price so that the store is making a profit.
scribe from book to scroll costs 20% o' market price in ritual components. cost of buying a scroll from a magic shop is still market price so that a store can make a profit.
selling found, scribed, or stolen scrolls: opening bid is likely to be 80% o' market price to attract buyers that might want the discount, but will still bring a bit of profit to the PC selling.
copying scrolls or rituals using Amaneusis costs 20% o' market price and cost of casting Amaneusis.
learning ritual occupies 4x casting time up to 8 hours in heroic, 16 in paragon, etc. thus, Pyrotechnics takes 4 minutes to learn as it takes 1 minute to cast. Tenser's Floating Disc takes 40 minutes to learn as it takes 10 minutes to cast.
scribing takes 8x casting time up to 16 hours in heroic, 32 in paragon, etc. thus scribing a scroll of Pyrotechnics takes 8 minutes to scribe, TFD takes 80 minutes to scribe. Caster may choose to expend ritual components required to cast while scribing for convenience. While a scroll takes longer to scribe, it is faster to cast, so having scrolls prepped is a worthwhile idea if time is of the essence.
Declared rule for all that are new to the game:
Passive Percept and Passive Insight is similar to taking a 10 at all times; however, Active use of those skills will result in increased clues and such even if you roll lower than passive because you are actively looking for something and are looking for something specific.
Declared rule for large groups:
All knowledge skills gain Passive status at times designated by DM to reduce rolls. When there is a large group, skipping some of the monster knowledge rolls and other knowledge rolls helps the game move smoother.
has the possibility of increased gold for your PC unbalanced your game at all?
has anyone else done the passive monster knowledge check for combat for their parties?
this is something i was strongly considering.
Back in 1e my DM had a custom crit system that madeyou roll a d100 after rolling a natural 20. The higher the d100 the more damage you did (no injury type stuff though) and a roll of 100 was an insta-kill. We had on instance of a low-level thief insta-killing the most powerful warrior in the world (an orc general for the main evil guy). That is definitely one of the most memorable encounters from that campaign.
trained skills *istead of just 5 points when trained we made it 5 points per tier when trained so that trained skills where continualy noticeable difrence even at high lvl
You may want to rethink this one. A +5 bonus for a trained skill is equally relevant at all levels. It doesn't need to scale at all. For example:
A hard DC at level 1 might be 18. Let's say, a diplomacy check. The party warlock and the party paladin both have 18 charisma (+4), but the paladin is trained in diplomacy (for a total bonus of +9, discounting either of them being a half elf or any other modifiers).
The warlock succeeds on a 14, and the paladin succeeds on a 9. The paladin has a 60% chance of success, but the warlock has a 35% chance of success.
Let's go up 29 levels. Both now have 26 charisma (+8), while the paladin is still the only one with skill training. And of course both get +15 for their level. The Warlock has +23 and the paladin has +28.
For a DC 37 task, the paladin still has a 60% chance of success, and the warlock still has a 35% chance of success. The paladin's chance is still almost twice that of the warlock.
However, if you instead gave the paladin +5 per tier, his bonus would be +38. There'd be no way for him to fail! If you wanted him to have even a slight chance of failure, say, 20%, you'd need the DC to be at least 43. On a DC 43 task, the warlock, who has the exact same charisma score as the paladin, mind you, only succeeds on a natural 20. He has the same chance of success as the fighter with 8 charisma (assuming you rule that a natural 20 is an automatic success, which some people still do).
Basically, this recreates a problem that 3.5 had, where trained people always succeed on tasks that untrained people have a fair chance at, or untrained people have no chance of success at tasks that trained people find difficult.
This might not be a huge problem for diplomacy checks, but what about stealth? If your level 30 party has to sneak somewhere, do you set the low enough that everyone has at least a chance to succeed? If so, the trained people don't even need to roll, which ruins the fun. Or do you set the DC high enough to challenge the trained people? In that case, several party members auto-fail, and you might as well not have included a stealth section.
TL;DR version: +5 represents an average of +25% success chance, which is significant at all levels. Making the bonus +10 or +15 destroys the balance of skill challenges, creating either automatic success for those with bonuses, or automatic failure for those without.
well I think best way to respond would be with real life take carpentry for instence low lv training would be say building a box while high level would be building a complex multie story house. even a untrained person can build a box but it takes real training to build the house. I liked the idea that a untrained person can't build the house without a stroke of pure luck after all if he isn't trained how is he going to do it? so at lvl 1 he can't do something now he comes back at lvl 29 still never training in the skill why can he suddenly understand how to do it. as for stealth I still use it as a contested rule so someone not trained in stealth tring to sneak past someone well trained at perception should have next to no chance of sucess it just makes sence. just my personal opinion and that of my players so far
If you and yours like a 3e kind of skill dynamic, that's all the explanation you need for this house rule, but I wouldn't use realism as an explanation. D&D never was particularly realistic.
Just out of curiosity, has your group played paragon and/or epic levels yet?
One houserule my groups started using last week taht I love (as the DM) is letting the players roll for defense against a static monster attack score. The defense bonus for the players is just their defense score -10, and the monster attack score is 12 + the attack bonus. It works great and I love it. The players like being more involved during monster turns as well, the defender in particular gets to do lots of roling.
II just wanted to report that this is working great and we love this method. It keeps the players involved and makes things easier for me.
Now I personally like this because I was never one for faking rolls into or out of crits and everyone feels it is far and balanced.
Critical Failures: Roll a 1 on anything, you royally messed up. We had a system for each different type of attack. Melee: enemy gets an attack of opportunity. Ranged: Your bowstring snaps, you need a standard action to repair it. Magic: You take magical backlash damage equal to 1d4. On a skill check: the results are hilarious. (You fail perception: You think everything is made out of chocolate)
Critical Success: Even if you would normally miss, you still hit. If it's part of a skill check, you accomplish the near-impossible.
Roll-offs: This one is used in some games but not in others. If a player or monster rolls exactly equal to the other's defense then they have a "roll-off". Both involved roll 1d20 and compare results. Whoever rolls higher gets to make a basic attack against the loser. (A fluff example would be the warrior swings his sword against the enemy orc. The orc blocks it with his axe, then swings again. The Warrior blocks that attack then strikes the orc while he's off balance.)
Zen Check: Kind of a random feature we like to do, a Zen check involves making a WIS check then realizing a random fact or having a dream. (Example: You feel you have suddenly found the inner peace that monks have been searching for since ancient times. Then you realize, it's just gas.)
Whenever I'm running a game I award action points for role playing instead of basing it on time. Ever play 7th Sea? It's like that. Whenever a player does or says something cool (especially in character) they get an action point.
Eggsacly how I roll as well
Crit tables are anathema to me. They slow down the game, they make crits too deadly (which actually hurts the PCs more than the monsters) and they're usually pretty ridiculous. I've seen a few where if you rolled a 1, you were going to die period- it was just a question of how many other PCs you'd take with you. It was totally stupid.
So how do crit charts slow down your game? Can't argue sometimes a crit can suck but for my group they're never really deadly to PCs. Monsters potentially, though that hasn't yet...but not PCs.
I give everyone one free regional language, b/c the language rules were designed before the regional languages came out.
There are a bunch more... when I think of a houserule, I post it to our campaign website, and the players and I deliberate over it. You can see our full list here:
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www.thetangledweb.net/forums/forumdispla...
rolling a natural 1 on a skill check or an attack, results in falling prone as well as an auto fail, rolling a 1 while prone results in damage, scenario specific as to how much
bards are not allowed, the entire group has decided that we will never have bards.
rolling a 20 in any skill is an auto success
players start at level 4, all our characters start off leveled, it gives a reason as to why we are the centers of the story, we have a reason for wanting to kill the band of orcs, or even why we have the guts or skill to try, it also puts us past the boring opening levels, where the fights can sometimes get repetitive if a person isnt homebrewing
everyone uses the same ability scores, 17,17,10,10,8,8 because we start at level 4 it can often make 2 scores at 20, while keeping the whole character pretty balanced. players can choose where the scores go as long as they use those specific scores.
players know the race of their enemies, our group tends to make d and d "video gamish" (where they pay more attention to the rolls then the actual outcome or actions they're making), extra details like knowing what we are fighting help to keep us in the game.
cellphones, calculators, and laptops(any form of electronic really) are banned, no matter the reason, failure to comply, results in dire consequences, up to and including cancelling the game.
im not even sure this is house rule or not but, death is only permanent when it is a decapitation.
coppers and silvers dont exist
eating only happens in cinematic instances, otherwise its assumed.