What are your house rules and why?

H

Heaven's Thunder Hammer

Member
I'm just curious about the type of rule changes various ST's have made and why.  I haven't run 2E yet and already feel like I should make some tweaks. Has anyone changed how any charms work? Combat rule tweaks?


So far I've identified a few things I have or want to change.


#1. Double essence. I did this in 1E so people could have more fun with super over powered combos. My players ate it up, I was able to power up the other exalts a bit, and they could take on more powerful big bads.


#2 Artifact armor once again seems overpriced for what it does. I'm not sure how to change it and still be balanced.


#3.  Familiars still suck. For one dot spent there in character creation, I'm giving a Familiar of 5 dots.


#4 Dragon Bloods only get 1m/die for booster charms. The whole point of them having less essence than solars is for them to have a disadvantage when it comes to using charms.


edited to add the most important change (which slipped my mind interestingly enough)


#5 The solars no long suffer from the Great Curse. I absolutely 100% hate it. It's a cool idea for why they fell in the first age, but I can't stand WW's thing for forcing flaws on the players. I find the game far more fun for myself as a ST to chuck it.


Any thoughts?
 
#2 Artifact armor once again seems overpriced for what it does. I'm not sure how to change it and still be balanced.
Click to expand...
Give them free extra powers. It makes them more unique and interesting, anyway.
 
I don't know, considering that Artifact armor is so low on mobility and fatigue (fatigue isn't so much a problem, but mobility is a problem), not to mention the fact they almost all have hardness.  That right there puts them above and beyond mundane armor IMHO.  You commit essence to have armor that is less restrictive, able to completely ignore blows that don't exceed it's hardness, and can in many cases end up with far more soak for an equivalent mundane piece.  


In the case of most Exalts, their large essence pools won't even be impacted by this commitment.  Dragon Blooded of course have some problems due to their much smaller essence pools, but any Solar, Abyssal, Lunar or even Sidereal will have plenty to spare.  Hell, I had an Abyssal with artifact Reinforced Buff-Jacket, Grimscythe (counted as a Grand Daiklaive before 2e), and a couple of smaller artifacts with low commitment costs.  And he still had enough essence to see him through an entire story set in creation at Perm. Essence of 3.
 
I'm not sure about the DB change. They have smaller pools full stop, they don't have persistent or perfect defenses, their dice pools for adders are smaller and they start with less in terms of stats and charms.


You also have to think about the cost for the 2nd Excellency. Is it now going to be 4 motes per success? I think with this change, DBs will blow through their essence even quicker than normal, thus making them much less effective. If that's what you want, then fine, but I think they're pretty good as they stand right now......
 
I've been toying with the Great Curse, at least in the Modernis Setting, given that the Solars in the Long Second Age are supposed to wrack up the Creation and begin the Third Age, which makes the Yozi and the Neverborn both salivate in anticipation, and I've been thinking of excising the Great Curse for the Modernis setting, for the Solars.  The Curse if lifted by former Primordials so that the Solars can feel that they're "free" of the last vestiges of their past fall, and can make "pure" decisions, ones still laden with the whisperings of the Neverborn and the Yozi.


I've been downplaying the Great Curse in my Modernis games, and I'm thinking about just chucking it. Of course, none of the other Exalted will know that, since the curse isn't widely known, and the Mad Solars of Old are still remembered in some circles, and everyone's waiting for them to blow...and any action can perceived as their fall from grace.


In the Modernis setting, at least in the games I've run, I've found that the Yozi and Neverborn both taking a strong interest in the affairs of the Solars, offering them succor from their Dragon Blooded adversaries, their wild Lunar lovers gone over to their bestial natures, their Sidereal stalkers.


In particular Ghosts are strong consular figures.  Some Ghosts are resistant to the sweet call of the Neverborn and are waiting for their lords to return for their guidance, and then there are tried and true servants of the Neverborn who are looking to manipulate the Solars to their own ends--the PCs just aren't sure which are which.
 
DV dosn't exsist, defense is rolled, because passive defense is stupid.


I only say this because I roll insanely high dodge and parry rolles, I tend to roll very low on nearly everything else.
 
Just because you don't like it doesn't make it stupid. The current defense system definitely makes combat faster and is, in my opinion, superior to rolling.
 
A change that I made for one of my campaigns involved the "spiral of madness" that characterized the First Age - characters accumulated Limit Break very very slowly, but each Break would permanently drop their Limit cap by one.  So first you have ten boxes, then nine...  There were ways to add to it (like gaining Essence), but essentially you could fall into a pretty permanent state of madness.
 
Most of the house-rules we have come up with are for mass combat.


1. A unit can lose multiple dots of Magnitude from a flurry, but not from a single attack. Excessive damage from one attack are "lost" and the unit loses their Magnitude.


2. Overwhelming and piercing weapons apply only if everyone in the unit has weapons with that ability.


3. Solo units (Magnitude 0) suffer wound penalties as normal.


4. Solo units have a minimum damage of 0, regardless of their Essence. However, overwhelming weapon damage will continue to apply.


5. Facing is not used in mass combat except for units that cannot specifically turn quickly (siege craft, ships, etc).


And this one was just added since I was being a whiny bitch about how underpowered the Dawn anima is compared to the other Solar powers.


6. When rolling a units Valor, add the Essence of the opposing Dawn Caste to the difficulty.
 
Vanman said:
Just because you don't like it doesn't make it stupid. The current defense system definitely makes combat faster and is, in my opinion, superior to rolling.
Click to expand...
Any rule I don't like I don't like it because I think it is stupid.


Defense isn't passive, you have to think to dodge just like throwing a punch.
 
EM is opposed to any rules changes that don't favor his characters' date=' specifically.[/quote']
I'm opposed to any rule change that I feel screws me.


By screw me I do not mean make things more difficult.


Screw me means the rules makes keeping my char alive.


Ok do any of you know what LOA is, if not the short version is the average of sales, it applys to rolling dice.


The way I roll defence rolls is mathmaticly impossable, I more ofen than not get more successes then I have dice.  The math only makes sense when you look at the rest of my rolls, they suck.


So I am unwilling to go to pasive defense, I'm not going to work twice as hard to get less than half of my normal successes on defense and still suck everywhere else.
Click to expand...
 
Yet if you're trained in combat, you learn how to move defensively as a natural progression of your fighting style. Unless you just stand straight up and hack away with no regard toward defense. I can argue the validity of having defenses work the way they are in 2nd Edition all day long, but at the end of the day you're not going to listen.


And have you actually played 2nd Edition or are you just basing this on your own mewling perceptions that "passive" defenses are stupid because you roll better? This sounds like a classic case of "I'm taking my ball and going home" syndrome.
 
Defense isn't passive' date=' you have to think to dodge just like throwing a punch.[/quote']
You are confusing "making a roll" with "a character taking an action".  There are also rules that let you automatically succeed at non-combat tasks if you have 7 or more dice in your pool, and nobody expects that the character just sits there and smirks while the action takes place on its own.  These are game rules meant to abstract away the world.  You don't roll dice to walk around and talk, either, but I don't expect that even you would try to argue that.


Why not just come out and say "I don't like DV because I use loaded dice" or whatever, instead of pretending that you must actually roll dice to do something?
Click to expand...
 
I have played D@D didn't like pasive defence then either, and i know how to bloody fight, and my attacks are just as natural as my evades, or blocks if I really must.
 
I have the opposite problem as EM, I roll like shit most of the time, especially for defense.  I have botched so many defense rolls in 1e, I don't think I would play in a 1e game again.  Static defense has saved my character and increased my enjoyment of the game since I don't have to spend time splitting dice pools, and rolling handfulls of dice for attack and defense.


And to play devils adovacate, combat in 2e is almost as slow since most people in my game stunt their DV to get the extra successes.  The main point of static defense is to get rid of splitting dice pools which new players found confusing.
 
One of our house rules is that raising Linguistics costs a flat 3 exp. Since what we mostly use it for is learning new languages and it just never seemed right that learning languages should be a progressivly harder prosses.


Another rule we made (tonight actually) is that you can "save" an action from a flurry to roll defense to boost your DV. We just noticed that this was changed from 1E and decided we didn't like the change.
 
HardKor said:
One of our house rules is that raising Linguistics costs a flat 3 exp. Since what we mostly use it for is learning new languages and it just never seemed right that learning languages should be a progressivly harder prosses.
Click to expand...
I like that idea. Consider it yoinked!
 
Here are my House Rules (and why):


1.) Roll DV and MDV as normal (because of the randomness of life, your reaction to each situation will never be exactly the same)


2.)  Something that reduces DV or MDV by one is not doubled just because the DV/ MDV is doubled (it makes the supernatural N/ PCs a bit more powerful)


3.) When increasing Mutated Attributes and Abilities, you pay the non-Mutated cost (I believe that an unnatural addition to your Attributes/ Abilities should not penalize your XP costs, since Merits should not cost as much if it is going to constantly incur an additional cost to your XP)


4.) When rolling auto successes if your number of ones rolled on a botch is less than your auto successess you do not botch. Sorcery is not effected by this rule (just because you get auto-successes, doesn't mean you can't botch, it's just harder.  And I'm stricter on Sorcery, as it is a more difficult task that can be fucked up easier)


5.) Shards: 300 Solars, 250 Abyssals, 50 Akuma, 600 Lunars, 100 Sidereals, 2400 Alchemicals (800 are cities), and 125,000 Dragon-Blooded (I think there should be a larger number of Exalts in Creation, as 150 Solars trying to save the world just seems a little too far fetched, but that's just me)


6.) See Merits and Flaws Alterations.rtf


7.) I use Flagg's Linguist Background


And I forgot that this one wasn't cannon:

uteck said:
And this one was just added since I was being a whiny bitch about how underpowered the Dawn anima is compared to the other Solar powers.
6. When rolling a units Valor, add the Essence of the opposing Dawn Caste to the difficulty.
Click to expand...
Merits and Flaws.rtf (with changes in italics):


Giant (as the Lunar Mutation):


8 Point Merit


+3 STR


-2 DEX


+3 STA


Gain a -0, two -1s, and four -2s


Walk at Dex 1.5, Run at Dex x2, Sprint at Dex x3


Huge (as the Lunar Mutation):


6 Point Merit


+2 STR


-1 DEX (always, instead of just when using small items)


+2 STA


Gain a -0 and a -1


Walk at Dex, Run at Dex x1.5, Sprint at Dex x2


Large (as the Lunar Mutation):


4 Point Merit


+25% mass and height


+1 STR


+1 STA


Gain a +0


Walk at 1/2 Dex, Run at Dex, Sprint at Dex x1.5


Small (as the Lunar Mutation, not the PG):


3 Point Flaw


-25% mass and height


-1 STR


lose a -2


+1 to being hit if not restrained


Walk at 1/3 Dex, Run at 1/2 Dex , Sprint at 2/3 Dex


Tiny (as the Lunar Mutation):


4 Point Flaw


-50% mass and height


-2 STR


+1 DEX


-1 STA


lose a -0 and a -2


+3 to being hit, +1 if immobile


+1 die to Stealth


Weapons are +1 STR to use


Walk at 1/4 Dex, Run at 1/3 Dex, Sprint at 1/3 (Dex +6)


Miniscule (as the Lunar Mutation):


5 Point Flaw


10% mass and height


-3 STR


+2 DEX


-2 STA


lose a -0, a -1, and 2 -2s


+5 to being hit, +3 if immobile


+3 dice to Stealth


Weapons are +2 STR to use


Walk at 1 yard, Run at 1/4 Dex, Sprint at 1/3 (Dex +1)


Double flight speed


Wings:


5 Point Merit


Up at Running Speed


Across at Running Speed x3


Down at Running Speed x10


Body of Stone:


7 Point Merit


Adds 6L/6B Soak and 6 Hardness


+4 Survival
 
Vanman said:
Yet if you're trained in combat, you learn how to move defensively as a natural progression of your fighting style. Unless you just stand straight up and hack away with no regard toward defense. I can argue the validity of having defenses work the way they are in 2nd Edition all day long, but at the end of the day you're not going to listen.
Click to expand...
Yes, and it seems that it doesn't matter what anyone else's opinion is, if it doesn't match yours it's wrong.  Get over it.  We happen to like using Dexterity+Dodge as a rolled value instead of a static defense and it works in our games.
Vanman said:
And have you actually played 2nd Edition or are you just basing this on your own mewling perceptions that "passive" defenses are stupid because you roll better? This sounds like a classic case of "I'm taking my ball and going home" syndrome.
Click to expand...
Yes, he has played 2nd Edition, as I'm running the game right now, and we both agreed that DV was not going to be in our games, as passive defense is basically an invisible shield deflecting all incoming attacks without you having to bother noticing them, which is not something everyone just gets for being there.
I know damn well that EM doesn't use loaded dice, since most of his dice were mine to begin with.


Oh, and thinking rules are stupid is the entire reason for house rules.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 3 (members: 0, guests: 3)
Back
Top