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Posted by Zachary
Here are our house rules, which were designed specifically to solve a number of problems with third edition, which I outlined some in my article comparing 3rd to 4th edition, here, in which I also explain why I feel Pathfinder (with some modifications) is the ideal way to preserve the depth and the lore of the original game without being bogged down by overcomplexity. What follows are what has worked so far for our group. I know what you're thinking: "Everyone makes up house rules, and it's dangerous because changing anything will unbalance the game, and you won't be able to predict the consequences until it's too late!" Worry not, only some of these house rules involve changing the actual balance of the game; the majority of them were already fixed by Pathfinder, and the rest involve solid DMing advice.
The house rules are divided into three sections: actual rules changes, things players should do, and things DMs should do.
We use the Pathfinder Core Rulebook as the governing rules for our campaign (so Pathfinder races, classes, skills, feats, spells, etc.). We do use other books, namely our other 3.0 and 3.5 books (noteably the Monster Manuals and the Complete series, or whatever is appropriate for the campaign at hand), but the Pathfinder Core Rulebook essentially replaces the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide.
Dynamic DCs
Armor class values are no longer [10 + the relevant modifiers]. The 10 is replaced by a d20 roll. This means that when you get attacked, you roll an opposing armor class roll. This is true for all players, NPCs, monsters, etc. The same is true for CMD. Instead of [10 + modifiers], the static 10 is replaced by a dynamic d20 roll.
This spices up combat, allowing the players to do more things when it isn't their turn, thus keeping them engaged. Secondly, it makes it so enemy ACs aren't quickly figured out (if at all).
Favored Classes
We still use the same favored class list as specified in the 3.5 Player’s Handbook (p.12, table 2-1; Racial Ability Adjustments) as well as the specified favored class of any other race in any other 3d edition book. However, the XP penalties associated with multiclassing have been removed, a la Pathfinder. You may level any number of classes any number of levels apart from each other without any kind of penalty.
Furthermore, for every class level a character takes in her favored class, she gains +1 skill rank and +1 hit points permanently.
This is a very minor thing, and its purpose is to preserve the flavor of certain races being more potent with certain classes.
Feat Changes
Note that Pathfinder, in addition to adding more feats, has changed how certain pre-existing feats work, notably Power Attack and Toughness.
The following feats have been added:
Sure Strike – Prerequisites: Base attack bonus +3.
Any time you make an attack with a weapon, you may elect to have it be a Sure Strike. If you do, lose your strength bonus to damage, and instead add that bonus to your Hit roll. You can’t use Sure Strike and Power Attack on the same attack.
Dizzying Blow – Prerequisites: Base attack bonus +6; An attack not made with a light weapon.
Once per encounter, if you score a hit on an enemy, you may elect to use a dizzying blow instead of deal damage as normal. If you do, you don’t deal damage with the attack; instead, you make a secondary attack that automatically hits, and your target becomes stunned for d3 rounds.
Counterattack – Prerequisites: Dexterity 16; Base attack bonus +4; this attack can only be made if you are wielding only light weapons (so no shields other than a buckler).
Up to twice per encounter, any time an enemy attacks you and misses, you may make an attack of opportunity against that enemy. You may spend an action point to grant an additional use of this ability.
These feats were added to give the melee classes more combat options, as they have tended to suffer from stagnant gameplay in the past.
Action Points
We've adopted the use of action points, but not at all in the way that they'v been done in other games. Other games use action points as a potent, powerful resource which grant a wide number of abilities. These are not so.
• A player gains one action point at 1st level, and an additional action point every third level thereafter (3d, 6th, 9th, 12th, 15th, and 18th)
• Action points are used up when spent, and are replenished via eating full, hearty meals. They are not replenished by sleep. The rate at which players renew their actions points should be intelligently discriminated by the DM. For example, characters with less than 3 action points may only gain back a fraction of an action point with each meal (ensuring that they need to eat more than one meal a day). Players with more than 3 action points should gain back multiple action points in a meal, but the DM will need to make that call. If all the players eat is gruel and old water, maybe don't renew their action points. If they eat a full, balanced meal, maybe renew several. If they eat at a banquet with a multiple-course meal and excellent wine and take an extended rest afterwards, think about renewing all their action points. The DM will discern what is approrpiate for each situation.
• Dehydration, extreme conditions, or severe injury may cause the loss of one or more action points. The higher level players are, the more action points can be lost.
• In combat you may spend up to 1 action point per round.
• Action points may be used in two ways: gaining a bonus to a roll, or upgrading one of your actions.
1) Gaining a bonus to rolling. You may spend an action point to grant a +d8 to any roll made on a d20. You may declare the use of an action point in this way after you see the result of your d20 roll, but before the DM declares the consequences of your roll.
2) Upgrade an existing action. As a review: during a normal DnD turn, you have a Standard action, a Move action, and a Swift action, each of which can be downgraded into an action lower than it if desired. Ex: Standard action -> Move action or Move action -> Swift action.
Using an action point you can now upgrade one of your actions during your turn. In this way, an action point may be used to turn a Move action into a Standard action, or a Swift action into a Move action. You may even spend an action point to upgrade a Standard action to a Full-round Action, allowing a character to move and perform a full-round action.
Because spellcasting is a complex business, you cannot yourself cast more than one spell per turn regardless of whether or not you spend an action point. You may however use your additional standard action to activate a wand or other magic item in order to cast an additional spell.
Action points are good because they allow players to avoid fumbling certain important rolls that no one (not even you) wants them to fail at. Because of Dynamic AC and CMD, action points also allow the player to make decisions to do things when it isn't their turn (like rolling an action point on an AC roll). Because they can upgrade an action, action points allow players to do more during their turns instead of feeling stuck and limited. Because they are replenished via food, they make eating directly relevant to gameplay, instead of just nominally important.
The primary thing that bogs down combat is having to stop in the middle of some epic exchange and look up something. Not only is this tiresome for the six or seven other people who are just sitting around waiting for this rules dispute to be resolved, but it breaks the mood of combat.
Most of the time, this is the player's fault, and this is good, because it's something that is easily fixed. If you're a player, especially if you're a spellcaster, you need to know your character. Really read through everything and know all the little ins and outs. But, even the best of us forget things, that's why our group uses notecards.
Put all of your abilities, your spells, your activated feats (feats that are attacks or special abilities, and not merely static bonuses like Iron Will) on notecards, and have them all organized and laid out in front of you during combat. I've found this to be especially useful for spellcasters, as you can write down (often in shorthand) everything about your spell, and have all that information at your fingertips. That way, if, in the middle of combat, the DM asks you if spell resistence is allowed on the spell you're casting, all you have to do is glance down at the notecard in front of you.
This is also a really fun and easy way for prepared spellcasters to prepare spells: simply take out your deck of spells and select the ones you've prepared, and lay them out in front of you. If you've prepare multiple copies of a spell, simply set a die on the notecard with the number of copies you've prepared.
Yes, it requires a little more planning and work, but it will save everyone a world of time later on, and, to put it into perspecive, it's still only a fraction of the work that the DM has to do every session.
If you're a DM, then you're probably going to roll your eyes when I say that, while the players can do things to speed up the game, most of that responsbility is on you. But, this is the life you chose, so let's get to it.
There are pretty much two categories of things you can do to smooth out your DnD game, things before the game begins and things during the game.
Before the Game Begins
What I usually do is give the players the core books, the monster manuals, and the Complete series, except for the complete Psionic, several levels lower gold then they should have for their level, and make the aforementioned rings banned or highly expensive. If I forget to ban the rings, and it's a problem, I usually have the party knocked out and robbed. The best formula is to severely limit their starting magical items, and then have them find all sorts of cool magic items during the game. This way, the party gets the adventure of finding cool stuff, the items are more special to them (because they found them or earned them instead of just buying them), and you get another way to reward them.
During the game
Encourage Combat Maneuvers
A large complaint about combat in 3rd edtion is the lack of interesting things to do in melee, especially for melee characters. Well, there has always existed grappling, disarming, feinting, tripping, and the like, all of which really spice up combat. The big problem used to be that no one knew how they worked. Pathfinder went a long way towards simplifying that (now they're all made off of one roll), but a lot of players (my party in particular) still don't use them, because, prior to Pathfinder, they were something that groups as a whole just didn't use. What I do is I make a little notecard, or a sheet of paper, summarizing each of the combat maneuvers and what the outcomes are, and leave it on the table so players know that those options are available.
Use Different Kinds of Enemies
This is sort of a no-brainer as far as good DM advice is concerned, but I figured it can't hurt to throw it in, while we're on the subject. Don't just throw a single high-HP monster with thick armor at the party. If at all possible, mix up the types of combat as much as you can. This is particularly easy and fun to do with intelligent foes. 4th edition does this well by dividing enemies into various categories which represent their role in the monster's party. Assemble monster parties the way players assemble their party: have some low-health, high damage-dealing foes, a couple high-HP, high-armor guys to soak up damage, a caster with crowd-control spells, maybe a healer too; have some enemies be melee only, some immune to criticals, some with high Spell Resistence, etc. The more variety, the more interesting the combat is, and the more players have to think hard in order to determine what the high-priority targets are, which ones need to be imobilized, which ones they have to stay away from, etc.
Use "Minions"
In addition to putting together different roles for enemies, 4th edition also developed a type of monster called the "minion." Minions are exactly like other monsters of their CR: they do appropriate amount of damage for their level, have appropriate armor class and saves, but they have 1 HP. Throwing a bunch of minions in a fight with three or four regular foes really helps to increase the dynamism of the fight without bogging it down. Players get to feel awesome as they mow down loads of goblins, while still having to deal with the strong foes in the middle of fight (the cave troll and necromancer, for instance).
Utilize Skill Challanges
The airship wings are too badly damaged, and it starts to spiral out of control. Selina casts fireball on a number of pirates running up the helm towards her, and they are incinerated. A quick perception check shows that the rest of the party is doing fine handling the remainder of the enemies. Selina turns her attention to the ship's controls, hoping she can regain control of the ship and bring the party to a smooth landing.
Bad DM: Make a use magic device check. You passed? Great. You stabilize the ship and you guys land a little roughly, but everyone's okay.
Good DM: Okay, it's time for a skill challenge. You notice as you go to manipulate the controls that more pirates have come up behind you. Roll for initiative to enter combat, but you may use a swift action each round to try to keep steering the ship while you fight the pirates. Keep making skill checks each round until either you succeed in navigating the ship down, or you roll enough failures that the ship crashes. Good luck.
What's a skill challenge? Check out the 4th edition DM's guide for the full rules, but it basically comes down to this: The DM has the DC of the skill check in his mind, as well as a number of successes that will make the endeavor succeed, and a number of fumbles that will make the whole endeavor go up in flames. For an easy skill challenge, have a lower DC with only a few successes necessary for victory, and failure only at an equal number of fumbles. To make the skill challenge harder, increase the DC, make the successes necessary greater and the fumbles necessary for failure even lower.
An easy skill challenge might be an acrobatics check with DC 15. Have the player roll 4 times over the course of the skill challenge. If the player beats the DC more times than not, she passes the skill challenge.
A hard skill challenge might be a DC of 18 or 20. Have the player roll 6 times over the course of the challenge, and fail if she fumbles more than once.
Skill challenges are an excellent way to keep things interesting and make skills relevent and fun, especially if you intersperse them with combat, as in the example above. This way, in a combat, you'll have all the players doing something different as you go around the table. One person might be trying to counter the enemy mage's spells, another might be mowing down a horde of minions that are blocking the way, and another might be desperately dodging flaming arrows while trying to deactivate a bomb that's about to go off. Now THAT'S excitement.
Use the Timer
The biggest envy that pen-and-paper games have towards digital games is (I suspect) the inability to play in real-time, and with that, the inability to get the crazy adrenaline running through the blood, the heart-pounding excitement that comes from first-person shooters and RTSs. Well, if you want combat to really FEEL like combat, there's no better way to do that than using an hourglass timer.
I picked up a little plastic hour-glass, about two inches long, for a few bucks at a hobby store. They come in different amounts, and the one I got was 30 seconds.
Here's what you do: When everyone rolls for initiative, and everyone has their initiatve figured out, look at them seriously and say, "everyone ready?" then say the first person's turn and drop the timer down. Watch the sand. When it runs out, turn it over and skip immediately to the next person at the table.
If you're not playing with miniatures, and people have to ask again to know where they're standing in the room, or pretty much for any advice that is your responsibility to have let them know already, turn the timer on its side to "pause" the sandflow, and answer it, then once they know what's going on, turn it back. Don't penalize a player for your mistakes, but show no mercy otherwise if they don't know their spells or spend too long thinking about what to do.
The idea is this: with 30 seconds to make a turn, the player needs to already know what they're going to do by the time it's their turn. This means they need to have been watching combat and paying CLOSE attention during each other players' turn (this is good, since it keeps everyone active and participating the entire time). Then when it rolls around to their turn, they're ready with their action, and they roll it up fast.
You're going to be hated for the first combat, maybe for the first couple of sessions if you do bust this out and your party is spoiled by 4-hour combats. But my goodness, once everyone gets it down does it do wonders for the FEEL of combat, for the beating of the heart, for everything. It FEELS like a combat, and it's satisfying.
People complain that it isn't enough time, but think about this: a round of combat is 6 seconds in game time. A whole round. In a real fight you don't have much time to think things through, and I've had players make "mistakes" because they were rushed by the timer, and, after the combat, realized what they should have done instead. But this is exactly like life, folks, and that's the wonderful thing about it. These rules also force players to really learn their character, otherwise they're not going to be able to do a whole lot.
There are two problems: Make sure you're not taking a whole lot of time either. You don't need to necessarily time yourself (although having another player time each of your NPCs' turns may help them to see you as all on the same side, in this) but don't lag down the action once it gets to your turn. Your monsters don't magically get longer to act than other players. The other problem is being too cruel: the goal of the timer is to introduce stress into the game, and that's good, but if you introduce too much stress, you'll create an unfun environment. Inevitably there will be one or two people at your table who don't do addition as fast (or who end up fumbling it because they are extra-conscious of the timer). You can slow down the timer (by turning it slightly sideways) or give a few extra seconds on the end to add up everything, and that is of course at your discretion. If a player has already thrown their dice down and that's their last action for the turn, and the timer runs out while they're adding, just let them add. It's not a big deal. What you DO want to punish is people starting their turn and going, "Uhm, well, hmm...well, hm..."
Sometimes, of course, there are real problems, like a figher with five or six iterative attacks, or great cleave, or a crit that needs to confirm several times, or something. Discuss before and after games with these players strategies for speeding up their turns, such as rolling one damage roll for all your cleaves, rolling multiple color-coded dice at the same time, etc. Once everyone is one the same page, and the players get over their intial irritation, your games will be dynamic and fun, and people will walk away breathless and excited after dangerous combats.
These are pretty much the sum of the house rules we use in our games (mine as well as several other groups who have already made the conversion to Pathfinder and still have these concerns, or DMs with 10+ characters in their party). For now, we're still finishing up campaigns with these rules, and they may be tweaked or amended as we go, but are pretty definitive for now. If you've used them and have feedback, or have really good house rules of your own, we'd love to hear. Send us an e-mail at the link below. Thanks for reading!
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BecuzWeCan is written and maintained by Zachary Porcu,
with Josh and Austin Cords, Teddy Laurman, and Cody Porcu.
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