First time making house rules... - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 theactualchrisbrown Feb 02, 2012 17:10:59	I'm going to be starting a new campaign for my group (which, to this point, has mostly run RAW) sometime in the near-ish future, and I want to shake things up a bit. At present, it's just about impossible for me to threaten the party unless I carefully craft encounters that will play to their weaknesses, which A) is rather time consuming on my part, and B) seems incongruous with the world, as not every group of enemies is going to perfectly counter their strengths. Because of this, my game tends to oscillate wildly between total rolling of encounters and near-TPKs. For my next game, I'm going to be running inherent bonuses and no/very few magical items, and post-Essentials material only. I also want to craft a few house rules to pump up the tension and threateningness of existing in the game world, and force my players to make more meaningful decisions about how they proceed through the game by presenting a (well-balanced) catch-22. If you roll a natural 20 on an attack roll, choose to deal maximum damage or make a saving throw. If you succeed on your saving throw, your hit deals 1.5x maximum damage. If you fail, your hit does not deal maximum damage. High crit weapons deal their extra damage regardless of the outcome of the saving throw. If you roll a natural 1 on an attack roll, make a saving throw. If you fail the saving throw, your weapon breaks if it was a weapon attack, or you are weakened until you spend a healing surge if it was an implement attack. Since we'll be using mundane items, I wanted to make critical rolls on both ends more meaningful and nerve-racking. Since players won't have extra crit damage from magic items, they can opt to try for more damage, but with a consequence if they blow it. On the other end of the spectrum, I wanted to make crit misses a little more harrowing, and since we'll be using inherent bonuses, a weapon breaking isn't a huge impediment. I also needed a way for the critical miss rule to apply to implement users, thus the weakening bit (some sort of overexertion something-or-other, fluff-wise). You may spend only two healing surges during a short rest. Once you have spent these healing surges, you may not spend more until you begin another combat encounter. Each time you reach a milestone, you gain a +1 bonus to two defenses of your choice. These last two were inspired by an Angry DM article I read recently about the effect of encounter resources on the threateningness of the world. By limiting how much players can heal outside of combat, but boosting their defenses, they must make a decision about whether they should press on being harder to hit but more vulnerable if they do get hit, or rest and go in fresh, but take more of a beating. Do these seem like rules that A) are well-balanced against each other, and B) will achieve my goal of forcing the players into more meaningful decisions? I'm also open to suggestions for other rules that will lend themselves towards my goals. Thanks!
#2 alitain Feb 02, 2012 19:28:57	Well the roll 20 might not be bad, though to be perfectly honestly I don't think I'd EVER take a saving throw for just a little extra damage. Way to risky especially since if I fail I lose the crit. Also you don't exactly clarify whether if you fail the roll and it doesn't do max damage if you still roll damage as if it was a normal attack or not. I mean I just assumed that if you chose to make a saving throw and failed the crit because just a normal hit, but figured I'd bring it up. As for the roll a 1...that one is more unbalanced. Way more in my mind. Now I'm not extensively familiar with the inherent bonuses but I know they basically at a +1 to atk/damage per tier last time I looked into them. Since they're meant to compensate(how I don't know) for not having a magical weapon/implement. That being said, rolling a 1 and having your weapon break isn't that big a deal. At first, forgetting that you were using the inherent bonuses I thought it was ridiculous that a rolled 1 would cause any magical weapon to just break. But again, that was before I remembered you were using the inherent bonuses. So for a weapon user unless they're devouted to ranged weapons having their weapon break will only cause them to do a little less damage. Now it MAY kinda equal out to about half their normal damage, but I don't think it would that often. Especially for a dagger rogue. Basically a weapon user especially if they knew about this houserule, would make sure to have a spare weapon. Since it wouldn't be magical it wouldn't be expensive at all to have say a spare longsword. One breaks, fine just switch. May cost a turn at most, or less. No big deal. And even if the weapon user doesn't have a spare weapon they can go Unarmed. Except for monks, you'll only do a base of 1d4 and your attack bonus will suffer a little(I think only Monks gain a profiency bonus using Unarmed, but I can be wrong) but again for someone using a dagger lets say that isn't a big deal aside from losing bonuses that can only be used for said weapon category. But really if I was playing in your game with this rule and used a weapon I would always have one spare. To me it would be stupid not to, and thus making this rule fairly pointless. On the other side of things though an implement user is weakened till they spend a healing surge. Totally screws them unfairly compared to the weapon users. Weakened they do half damage, all their damage is halved. While weapon users may lose a dice or two going from a longsword to unarmed, and maybe a point or two of damage(depending on bonuses), they'll still get all their same damage bonuses. That and the fact that making an implement user stay weakened until they spend a HS is unfair and kinda ridiculous. Aside from healing abilities/potions, a player can only use second wind once per encounter(again, aside from abilities) to use a HS. That means that the implement user will be forced to either use their second wind possibly at a time when they haven't taken much if any damage thus wasting it, to become unweakened. Or, if they've already spent their second wind then they're screwed and forced to rely on powers whether their own or more likely from the leader. And again, that would mean the leader would be forced to waste a use of their healing ability or a healing ability to heal them when they may or may not really need it just so that they can become unweakened. There's also something else you may not have been aware of, weakened doesn't just halve damage. While weakened you cannot cause ongoing damage. So the Sorcerer using an ability that causes the enemy to take say 10 ongoing fire damage suddenly would be doing half damage AND now wouldn't cause the ongoing damage either. Totally screwed. I wholely and completely suggest NOT implementing that rule. Now though here's a suggestion. I get you want to make your battles feel more harrowing but to be honest sometimes the party is just good. Or you just need to really assess your battles. Sure not every group of enemies is going to logically be able to counter the group and they don't need to. But you can still make battles tough for the group without purposely trying to counter their abilities. But anyway, what I was going to say is that for the Roll a 1 rule, I suggest something else. Our group used this rule in 3.5 and for one player(there was a reason) when we switched, though in general we stopped. Anyway the rule was that when you roll a natural 1 you dropped your weapon/implement. Usually the weapon/implement would fall in a square adjacent to you that the DM would choose, there were some occasions where a weapon would go flying. I think that would be a better rule, and fair to both weapon and implement users. It would cost them a move action to reach down and grab their weapon/implement and if it flew outta their hands and landed in a non adjacent square then they have to waste more actions to move to the spot and retrieve it.
#3 alitain Feb 02, 2012 20:10:52	Alright I'm making a second post because my first ended up WAY WAY long. So to address the second two houserules I felt it better to just post separately. Anyway, first rule the spend only 2 HS. Don't really see the reason to hurt the party. I mean okay again, I get you want more harrowing combats but like I mentioned above there are other ways than punishing the players. The thing is it kinda just sounds like the players are doing well and you're punishing them for it. And like I said above, you probably just need to reasses your battles. I'm not saying it to be mean, I DM'ed a game before and most of the time I underestimated the group and the battles weren't that tough which sucked. It also sucked because I never got the hang of making them tough enough, whenever I did I always weakened the monsters a little because I thought I may have made them too tough. So that being said I really don't see a reason for this rule. If the battles aren't tough(which not every battle needs to be) then the group wont need to use any HS or maybe just one or two. But if the battle is really tough like a boss battle or something close then most likely they're going to be beaten down. And if you expect them to go into another battle without an extended rest to recover HP then the group DOES need to heal up. The thing is if they're going into a tough enough battle where they're going to need seriously healing afterward most likely they've used up a couple encounters/dailies. And if you pit them against another tough battle right after so they only have a chance for a short rest then they NEED their HP. They'll already be going into the battle with less than full powers most likely(though yeah, they'll get encounters back), but having them go in with potentially half or less health because they can only spend two HS would most likely cause the team to wipe or at least one or more players to die in a tough battle. As for the second one, the defense bonus at milestones, not really sure what you're getting at here. Are these meant to be permanent? Because the way you have them worded they're permanent bonuses to defenses just for doing a couple battles in a row. Also given that you're whole deal is to make things tougher these seems counterintuitive. I would say that if you're going to do the defense bonus deal I would do something like; "Each time you reach a milestone, you gain a +1 bonus to a defense of your choice. This bonus only lasts during the first round of your next combat or until you take an extended rest." Something like that. Because there has to be some limitation to the bonus if you're going to do it.
#4 chaosfang Feb 03, 2012 4:07:33	Show I'm going to be starting a new campaign for my group (which, to this point, has mostly run RAW) sometime in the near-ish future, and I want to shake things up a bit. At present, it's just about impossible for me to threaten the party unless I carefully craft encounters that will play to their weaknesses, which A) is rather time consuming on my part, and B) seems incongruous with the world, as not every group of enemies is going to perfectly counter their strengths. Because of this, my game tends to oscillate wildly between total rolling of encounters and near-TPKs. For my next game, I'm going to be running inherent bonuses and no/very few magical items, and post-Essentials material only. I also want to craft a few house rules to pump up the tension and threateningness of existing in the game world, and force my players to make more meaningful decisions about how they proceed through the game by presenting a (well-balanced) catch-22. If you roll a natural 20 on an attack roll, choose to deal maximum damage or make a saving throw. If you succeed on your saving throw, your hit deals 1.5x maximum damage. If you fail, your hit does not deal maximum damage. High crit weapons deal their extra damage regardless of the outcome of the saving throw. If you roll a natural 1 on an attack roll, make a saving throw. If you fail the saving throw, your weapon breaks if it was a weapon attack, or you are weakened until you spend a healing surge if it was an implement attack. Since we'll be using mundane items, I wanted to make critical rolls on both ends more meaningful and nerve-racking. Since players won't have extra crit damage from magic items, they can opt to try for more damage, but with a consequence if they blow it. On the other end of the spectrum, I wanted to make crit misses a little more harrowing, and since we'll be using inherent bonuses, a weapon breaking isn't a huge impediment. I also needed a way for the critical miss rule to apply to implement users, thus the weakening bit (some sort of overexertion something-or-other, fluff-wise). You may spend only two healing surges during a short rest. Once you have spent these healing surges, you may not spend more until you begin another combat encounter. Each time you reach a milestone, you gain a +1 bonus to two defenses of your choice. These last two were inspired by an Angry DM article I read recently about the effect of encounter resources on the threateningness of the world. By limiting how much players can heal outside of combat, but boosting their defenses, they must make a decision about whether they should press on being harder to hit but more vulnerable if they do get hit, or rest and go in fresh, but take more of a beating. Do these seem like rules that A) are well-balanced against each other, and B) will achieve my goal of forcing the players into more meaningful decisions? I'm also open to suggestions for other rules that will lend themselves towards my goals. Thanks!

Post/Author/DateTime

Post

theactualchrisbrown

Feb 02, 2012 17:10:59

I'm going to be starting a new campaign for my group (which, to this point, has mostly run RAW) sometime in the near-ish future, and I want to shake things up a bit. At present, it's just about impossible for me to threaten the party unless I carefully craft encounters that will play to their weaknesses, which A) is rather time consuming on my part, and B) seems incongruous with the world, as not every group of enemies is going to perfectly counter their strengths. Because of this, my game tends to oscillate wildly between total rolling of encounters and near-TPKs. For my next game, I'm going to be running inherent bonuses and no/very few magical items, and post-Essentials material only. I also want to craft a few house rules to pump up the tension and threateningness of existing in the game world, and force my players to make more meaningful decisions about how they proceed through the game by presenting a (well-balanced) catch-22.

If you roll a natural 20 on an attack roll, choose to deal maximum damage or make a saving throw. If you succeed on your saving throw, your hit deals 1.5x maximum damage. If you fail, your hit does not deal maximum damage. High crit weapons deal their extra damage regardless of the outcome of the saving throw.

If you roll a natural 1 on an attack roll, make a saving throw. If you fail the saving throw, your weapon breaks if it was a weapon attack, or you are weakened until you spend a healing surge if it was an implement attack.

Since we'll be using mundane items, I wanted to make critical rolls on both ends more meaningful and nerve-racking. Since players won't have extra crit damage from magic items, they can opt to try for more damage, but with a consequence if they blow it. On the other end of the spectrum, I wanted to make crit misses a little more harrowing, and since we'll be using inherent bonuses, a weapon breaking isn't a huge impediment. I also needed a way for the critical miss rule to apply to implement users, thus the weakening bit (some sort of overexertion something-or-other, fluff-wise).

You may spend only two healing surges during a short rest. Once you have spent these healing surges, you may not spend more until you begin another combat encounter.

Each time you reach a milestone, you gain a +1 bonus to two defenses of your choice.

These last two were inspired by an Angry DM article I read recently about the effect of encounter resources on the threateningness of the world. By limiting how much players can heal outside of combat, but boosting their defenses, they must make a decision about whether they should press on being harder to hit but more vulnerable if they do get hit, or rest and go in fresh, but take more of a beating.

Do these seem like rules that A) are well-balanced against each other, and B) will achieve my goal of forcing the players into more meaningful decisions? I'm also open to suggestions for other rules that will lend themselves towards my goals.

Thanks!

alitain

Feb 02, 2012 19:28:57

Well the roll 20 might not be bad, though to be perfectly honestly I don't think I'd EVER take a saving throw for just a little extra damage. Way to risky especially since if I fail I lose the crit. Also you don't exactly clarify whether if you fail the roll and it doesn't do max damage if you still roll damage as if it was a normal attack or not. I mean I just assumed that if you chose to make a saving throw and failed the crit because just a normal hit, but figured I'd bring it up.

As for the roll a 1...that one is more unbalanced. Way more in my mind. Now I'm not extensively familiar with the inherent bonuses but I know they basically at a +1 to atk/damage per tier last time I looked into them. Since they're meant to compensate(how I don't know) for not having a magical weapon/implement. That being said, rolling a 1 and having your weapon break isn't that big a deal. At first, forgetting that you were using the inherent bonuses I thought it was ridiculous that a rolled 1 would cause any magical weapon to just break. But again, that was before I remembered you were using the inherent bonuses.

So for a weapon user unless they're devouted to ranged weapons having their weapon break will only cause them to do a little less damage. Now it MAY kinda equal out to about half their normal damage, but I don't think it would that often.  Especially for a dagger rogue. Basically a weapon user especially if they knew about this houserule, would make sure to have a spare weapon. Since it wouldn't be magical it wouldn't be expensive at all to have say a spare longsword. One breaks, fine just switch. May cost a turn at most, or less. No big deal.  And even if the weapon user doesn't have a spare weapon they can go Unarmed. Except for monks, you'll only do a base of 1d4 and your attack bonus will suffer a little(I think only Monks gain a profiency bonus using Unarmed, but I can be wrong) but again for someone using a dagger lets say that isn't a big deal aside from losing bonuses that can only be used for said weapon category.

But really if I was playing in your game with this rule and used a weapon I would always have one spare. To me it would be stupid not to, and thus making this rule fairly pointless. On the other side of things though an implement user is weakened till they spend a healing surge. Totally screws them unfairly compared to the weapon users. Weakened they do half damage, all their damage is halved. While weapon users may lose a dice or two going from a longsword to unarmed, and maybe a point or two of damage(depending on bonuses), they'll still get all their same damage bonuses. That and the fact that making an implement user stay weakened until they spend a HS is unfair and kinda ridiculous. Aside from healing abilities/potions, a player can only use second wind once per encounter(again, aside from abilities) to use a HS.

That means that the implement user will be forced to either use their second wind possibly at a time when they haven't taken much if any damage thus wasting it, to become unweakened. Or, if they've already spent their second wind then they're screwed and forced to rely on powers whether their own or more likely from the leader. And again, that would mean the leader would be forced to waste a use of their healing ability or a healing ability to heal them when they may or may not really need it just so that they can become unweakened. There's also something else you may not have been aware of, weakened doesn't just halve damage. While weakened you cannot cause ongoing damage. So the Sorcerer using an ability that causes the enemy to take say 10 ongoing fire damage suddenly would be doing half damage AND now wouldn't cause the ongoing damage either. Totally screwed.

I wholely and completely suggest NOT implementing that rule. Now though here's a suggestion. I get you want to make your battles feel more harrowing but to be honest sometimes the party is just good. Or you just need to really assess your battles. Sure not every group of enemies is going to logically be able to counter the group and they don't need to. But you can still make battles tough for the group without purposely trying to counter their abilities. But anyway, what I was going to say is that for the Roll a 1 rule, I suggest something else.  Our group used this rule in 3.5 and for one player(there was a reason) when we switched, though in general we stopped. Anyway the rule was that when you roll a natural 1 you dropped your weapon/implement. Usually the weapon/implement would fall in a square adjacent to you that the DM would choose, there were some occasions where a weapon would go flying.

I think that would be a better rule, and fair to both weapon and implement users. It would cost them a move action to reach down and grab their weapon/implement and if it flew outta their hands and landed in a non adjacent square then they have to waste more actions to move to the spot and retrieve it.

alitain

Feb 02, 2012 20:10:52

Alright I'm making a second post because my first ended up WAY WAY long. So to address the second two houserules I felt it better to just post separately.

Anyway, first rule the spend only 2 HS. Don't really see the reason to hurt the party. I mean okay again, I get you want more harrowing combats but like I mentioned above there are other ways than punishing the players. The thing is it kinda just sounds like the players are doing well and you're punishing them for it. And like I said above, you probably just need to reasses your battles. I'm not saying it to be mean, I DM'ed a game before and most of the time I underestimated the group and the battles weren't that tough which sucked. It also sucked because I never got the hang of making them tough enough, whenever I did I always weakened the monsters a little because I thought I may have made them too tough.

So that being said I really don't see a reason for this rule. If the battles aren't tough(which not every battle needs to be) then the group wont need to use any HS or maybe just one or two. But if the battle is really tough like a boss battle or something close then most likely they're going to be beaten down. And if you expect them to go into another battle without an extended rest to recover HP then the group DOES need to heal up. The thing is if they're going into a tough enough battle where they're going to need seriously healing afterward most likely they've used up a couple encounters/dailies. And if you pit them against another tough battle right after so they only have a chance for a short rest then they NEED their HP. They'll already be going into the battle with less than full powers most likely(though yeah, they'll get encounters back), but having them go in with potentially half or less health because they can only spend two HS would most likely cause the team to wipe or at least one or more players to die in a tough battle.

As for the second one, the defense bonus at milestones, not really sure what you're getting at here. Are these meant to be permanent? Because the way you have them worded they're permanent bonuses to defenses just for doing a couple battles in a row. Also given that you're whole deal is to make things tougher these seems counterintuitive. I would say that if you're going to do the defense bonus deal I would do something like; "Each time you reach a milestone, you gain a +1 bonus to a defense of your choice. This bonus only lasts during the first round of your next combat or until you take an extended rest."

Something like that. Because there has to be some limitation to the bonus if you're going to do it.

chaosfang

Feb 03, 2012 4:07:33

Show

I'm going to be starting a new campaign for my group (which, to this point, has mostly run RAW) sometime in the near-ish future, and I want to shake things up a bit. At present, it's just about impossible for me to threaten the party unless I carefully craft encounters that will play to their weaknesses, which A) is rather time consuming on my part, and B) seems incongruous with the world, as not every group of enemies is going to perfectly counter their strengths. Because of this, my game tends to oscillate wildly between total rolling of encounters and near-TPKs. For my next game, I'm going to be running inherent bonuses and no/very few magical items, and post-Essentials material only. I also want to craft a few house rules to pump up the tension and threateningness of existing in the game world, and force my players to make more meaningful decisions about how they proceed through the game by presenting a (well-balanced) catch-22.

If you roll a natural 20 on an attack roll, choose to deal maximum damage or make a saving throw. If you succeed on your saving throw, your hit deals 1.5x maximum damage. If you fail, your hit does not deal maximum damage. High crit weapons deal their extra damage regardless of the outcome of the saving throw.

If you roll a natural 1 on an attack roll, make a saving throw. If you fail the saving throw, your weapon breaks if it was a weapon attack, or you are weakened until you spend a healing surge if it was an implement attack.

Since we'll be using mundane items, I wanted to make critical rolls on both ends more meaningful and nerve-racking. Since players won't have extra crit damage from magic items, they can opt to try for more damage, but with a consequence if they blow it. On the other end of the spectrum, I wanted to make crit misses a little more harrowing, and since we'll be using inherent bonuses, a weapon breaking isn't a huge impediment. I also needed a way for the critical miss rule to apply to implement users, thus the weakening bit (some sort of overexertion something-or-other, fluff-wise).

You may spend only two healing surges during a short rest. Once you have spent these healing surges, you may not spend more until you begin another combat encounter.

Each time you reach a milestone, you gain a +1 bonus to two defenses of your choice.

These last two were inspired by an Angry DM article I read recently about the effect of encounter resources on the threateningness of the world. By limiting how much players can heal outside of combat, but boosting their defenses, they must make a decision about whether they should press on being harder to hit but more vulnerable if they do get hit, or rest and go in fresh, but take more of a beating.

Do these seem like rules that A) are well-balanced against each other, and B) will achieve my goal of forcing the players into more meaningful decisions? I'm also open to suggestions for other rules that will lend themselves towards my goals.

Thanks!