Best (and Worst) House Rules?

[Ashendale]

You see them mentioned in the forums quite frequently, but they are often vague and unexplained. House rules, everybody's got'em. They can be as simple as 'everyone starts with $$$ for gear selection' to as complex as 'if you fail high/low percent you can guess exact percent for a success'.

So;
1. What are your personal house rules as a GM? Please elaborate.
2. How did they come to be?
3. What are your favorite house rules as a PC? Please elaborate.
4. What are some of the worst house rules you've seen or heard of?
5. Any funny rules (like 'GM never buys the pizza' or 'free exp for bringing snacks'?)

[Ashendale]

Mine:

1. My personal house rules as GM:
A. When rolling characters, 1 is a reroll (any subsequent 1 from that reroll is kept) and 6 is an extra roll (with any subsequent 6 being added to the original, and any 1 occurring after the initial 6 is kept.)
B. GM has the right to fudge rolls in the party's favor if they choose to and also to perform sequential critical against cheating Players (any subsequent cheating results in the expulsion of the Player from the group.)
C. MDC is x10 not x100. This applies to PCs, NPCs and all monsters.
D. If a GM rolls percentile dice and PC fails their high/low guess, PC is allowed ONE guess at the exact percentage to pull out a miraculous win.
E. Any damage/loss your character takes as a result of you not paying attention is nonnegotiable.
F. PCs must specify when they are not talking/acting in character. Too many slip ups and every action is applied in game (at GMs discretion.)
G. Character creation is subject to GM approval, including but not limited to RCC, OCC, equipment, backstory, and insanities/disabilities. If a character sheet is suspicious (and was not rolled in front of the GM) it is subject to be rerolled under GM supervision.
H. There are more but I can't think of them...

2.How they came to be:
A. Rule passed down from my first GM, my Dad. I feel it makes the characters that much more special, because PCs are supposed to be above the average NPC in regards to abilities and skills. This gives them that nudge.
B. This should be obvious.
C. It just makes things easier on the GM/PCs.
D. This is a funny story. In our house, we do high/low guessing on many matters of combat, rp, etc. Especially in the case of a tie roll between PC and NPC. It was our small Coalition group (all lvl 2) who had been ambushed on one of their patrols by bandits. Our communications specialist had been caught in the path of a thrown frag grenade. The Player met the GMs roll for hit/dodge, so high/low was asked and percentiles rolled. He guessed high and was wrong. Before the GM could say anything about the outcome besides his being wrong, he lamented 'oh man, it was probably something like 34...The GM just stared at him in amazement before moving aside to let the players see his percentile standing at 34. So the GM ruled he was allowed a miracle and his character barely caught and tossed the grenade safely away. We haven't had many correct guesses, but the house rule stand.
E. We have problems with getting sidetracked for long periods of time, so this rule was unanimously put into effect.
F. Often this slides quite a lot, but if I've got a Player that constantly says they are hitting another PC or stealing from the town mayor, it's gonna happen in game and they can suffer the consequences.
G. Should be obvious.

3. See above.

4. Haven't had many groups, sadly, so I haven't seen or heard of any.

5. GM never buys the pizza or does the dishes that night here

[Glistam]

I had a bunch that I had come up with some time ago, but for the next game I'll be running soon I'm going to scrap them all and just let the house rules develop as necessary when situations come up that require them to adjudicate.

[Dog_O_War]

Mine:

1. My personal house rules as GM:
C. MDC is x10 not x100. This applies to PCs, NPCs and all monsters.

2.How they came to be:
C. It just makes things easier on the GM/PCs.

You do realize that your point C here creates a situation that becomes incredibly abusive, right? I mean, I understand the notion of why a person cuts down their MDC totals (I myself use 30 SDC to 1 MDC), but without additional rules (I use an armour rating system), a "simple" 'MDC is x10' becomes a target for loopholes and abuse within the game's rules.

[Ashendale]

Mine:

1. My personal house rules as GM:
C. MDC is x10 not x100. This applies to PCs, NPCs and all monsters.

2.How they came to be:
C. It just makes things easier on the GM/PCs.

You do realize that your point C here creates a situation that becomes incredibly abusive, right? I mean, I understand the notion of why a person cuts down their MDC totals (I myself use 30 SDC to 1 MDC), but without additional rules (I use an armour rating system), a "simple" 'MDC is x10' becomes a target for loopholes and abuse within the game's rules.

Actually, we don't run into much of an issue with it. We run a simplified system. And as far as AR, we treat it kinda like DnD, you have to roll so high to damage it at all (and this is after the roll to strike.) Otherwise, GM simplifies game rolls and mechanics to suit. And as I typed this on my phone, I missed some stuff, but we do use the AR system to combat abuse

I'll be honest, as much as I love rifts, I use it more for setting than rules. House GM always condenses the rules and uses best judgement.

[Alrik Vas]

I catagorized weaponry, armor, bots etc into 3 stages: Infantry, Support and Heavy

Infantry works the way the system does in all of our experience. It's body armor, exoskeletons, androids, rifles, pistols, man-sized melee weapons, light 'borgs, Hatchling Dragons and any and non-supernatural MDC creatures (even the huge ones). Motor/hover/skycycles fall into this catagory as well.

Support catagory is Power Armor, Heavy Infantry Weapons (basically anything covered by the WP Heavy Energy), APC's, Heavy 'Borgs, light support craft like helicopters, Adult Dragons and lesser demons.

Heavy Catagory includes fortifications, tanks, 'Bots, Ancient Dragons, Greater Demons/Devils, Gods, Intelligences, starships, and many many other things of that nature.

The reason to separate everything is mostly because of damage and damage resistance. Magic is also affected, but it is infantry normally, support on a ley line and heavy on a nexus.

How it works is Infantry deals and resists damage on a factor of 1. Support is a 2, taking half from infantry and dealing double to it. Heavy is a factor of 3, dealing double to Support while taking only half. It reduces damage from infantry by 2/3 and deals x3 damage to infantry.

That's a major thing. It makes fighting certain opponents extremely dangerous. Even your 100 MDC EBA might not protect you from the anti-personnel lasers on a power armor for more than a few seconds, for instance.

I also let Strength type affect damage fully. A brodkil with a vibro-sword and fencing 24 SN PS would deal his 2d6(+9 ps bonus) punch damage, plus the blade's 2d6, plus the 1d6 from fencing for a total of 5d6+9. Players are affected the same way of they have SN PS, obviously.

Also, i love the crit on modified 17+ for AP weapons, i use the hell out of that. Also, certain heavy, armor peircing weapons i just have do double damage all the time because a solid hit should pretty much destroy the target it was intended to obliterate anyway.

I also make movement part of your normal action. If you want to move i take your speed, cut it in half and let you move the 10's digit in feet x5 and still take an action (which is at a penalty), if all you do is move for your action you get the full 10's digit x5, per attack per melee.

Skill % are no longer affected by just IQ, they are increased by the stat that is relevant to the skill. Prowl, Backflips and other feats of agility use Physical Prowess, Climbing and swimming tend to use strength, Secduction uses Mental Affinity etc etc. You add your stat to the skill %, rather than using the IQ type bonus.

Whoever succeeds by more is the one who wins contested skill rolls, generally. Though some things such as perception are governed by a D20, so Concealment vs Detect Concealment, you gain +1 to your perception roll for every degree of 10 you beat the Conceal Roll, or -1 for every degree of failure, as an example.

People take a lot of SDC damage while wearing body armor. Something with SN PS smacks you in your armor and you go flying through the air, expect it to be bad. EBA also doesn't protect you fully from grappling.

Most critical hits affect hit points (this is something i pick and choose on, but i like to be fair about it).

There's more, but i'm drawing a blank right now.


The worst houserule i've ever played under was a GM declaring you take damage for arguing with him.

[Dog_O_War]

Mine:

1. My personal house rules as GM:
C. MDC is x10 not x100. This applies to PCs, NPCs and all monsters.

2.How they came to be:
C. It just makes things easier on the GM/PCs.

You do realize that your point C here creates a situation that becomes incredibly abusive, right? I mean, I understand the notion of why a person cuts down their MDC totals (I myself use 30 SDC to 1 MDC), but without additional rules (I use an armour rating system), a "simple" 'MDC is x10' becomes a target for loopholes and abuse within the game's rules.

Actually, we don't run into much of an issue with it. We run a simplified system. And as far as AR, we treat it kinda like DnD, you have to roll so high to damage it at all (and this is after the roll to strike.) Otherwise, GM simplifies game rolls and mechanics to suit. And as I typed this on my phone, I missed some stuff, but we do use the AR system to combat abuse

I'll be honest, as much as I love rifts, I use it more for setting than rules. House GM always condenses the rules and uses best judgement.

There is a significant difference between 'the AR system' that Palladium uses, and an armour rating system that I use. The most significant difference being that it does not matter what you roll with the system I use.

I also make movement part of your normal action. If you want to move i take your speed, cut it in half and let you move the 10's digit in feet x5 and still take an action (which is at a penalty), if all you do is move for your action you get the full 10's digit x5, per attack per melee.

So more attacks means you move faster in combat?
This is a bad rule. Please see below as to why.
So two characters with the same speed of say 40, but with different attacks, say 8 and 4, the guy with 8 attacks moves twice the speed of his 4-attack counter-part.
And what if you upped the guy with 4 attacks' speed by 20 so that he's moving at 60; he's moving at 15 feet per action, whereas the other guy is moving at 10 feet per action. At the end of the day though, one person has moved 60 feet and the other has moved 80 feet - but the guy with a speed that is 1.5 times higher is moving 25% slower because he has less attacks?

Then there is the all-out move; doubling the numbers, the 40 speed guy is moving at 160 feet per 15 seconds, where as the 60 speed guy is moving at 120 feet per 15 seconds; both movement speeds are extremely low for an "all-out" speed over the course of 15 seconds. That represents a slow jog in combat, which I doubt you want your combat moving at a slow jog.

A 60 speed in Rifts originally measures a decent miles per hour rate; Juicers move at around this speed (I believe they average a 70), and yet you've got it set to "out-of-shape shamble" as far as movement speeds are concerned. Additionally, while I understand and even agree on some level that it is a good idea to just use the 10s digit as a kind of bench-mark, if you were to discount say, 9 points - the maximum before you kick over to a 10s digit, from any other stat, how does that look when concerning your game? The greatest example I suppose is a PP of 20 and a PP of 29; the difference between the two is massive. So why trivialize one stat to such a degree while the others get a pass?

Just something to consider. And yes, this critique was meant to be satirical; sometimes people make changes because they seem like good ideas, but those changes cause humours mistakes to occur.

[Alrik Vas]

It's just for tactical movement on a piece of graph paper. If i needed it to be wholly realistic, i'd play a different game, or none at all.

[Dog_O_War]

It's just for tactical movement on a piece of graph paper. If i needed it to be wholly realistic, i'd play a different game, or none at all.

I'm not saying it need be realistic, just saying that it need be better.

[drewkitty ~..~]

"We are doing it Diceless in this game"

My opinion this is The Most Stupid house rule ever created.

[Ashendale]

"We are doing it Diceless in this game"

My opinion this is The Most Stupid house rule ever created.

Oh man...and trying to show players who have only ever played dice less games how to play on a d20/other system is the worst.

Yeah, one of my best friends 'just can't get into Rifts because of all the rules about rolling." His old groups were basically forum RP style sessions in a living room. Seriously bums me out.

[SpiritInterface]

The worst house rule I ever played under was that the GM generated the Characters and kept them in-between runs, and the Players never knew who they were going to play before the game.

[Alrik Vas]

My buddy walks into this game he spent a good three hours working on a character for. GM tells him to roll %, he gets 100%! He askes what it was for, the GM tells him "For your background", he then flips through a note book, looks up at my friend and says:

"You died, make a new character."

He got up, went to his truck and left, never coming back.

[The Dark Elf]

My buddy walks into this game he spent a good three hours working on a character for. GM tells him to roll %, he gets 100%! He askes what it was for, the GM tells him "For your background", he then flips through a note book, looks up at my friend and says:

"You died, make a new character."

He got up, went to his truck and left, never coming back.

Im sorry, what happened? A roll of 00% meant that his character died before the game started? What was the game?

[Ashendale]

I am a proud member of the Order of the d30:

"d30 Rule: Once per game session, a player may choose to roll a d30 instead of any normal dice roll. This cannot be used for any purpose during character creation or for hit point rolls."

This is often called "supercharging" a roll, and it is often wildly hilarious in terms of either hoping to bump the basic damage of a light weapon (a "lucky shot"), or when it fails and they roll a one. It's probably been one of the most well-received rules over the years, across various systems.

Ha! I love it!

[Nightmask]

My buddy walks into this game he spent a good three hours working on a character for. GM tells him to roll %, he gets 100%! He askes what it was for, the GM tells him "For your background", he then flips through a note book, looks up at my friend and says:

"You died, make a new character."

He got up, went to his truck and left, never coming back.

Im sorry, what happened? A roll of 00% meant that his character died before the game started? What was the game?

Sounds like it, and I definitely don't fault his friend for going 'if this is what I can expect, killed before even starting the game, no way I'm wasting my time with this guy as a GM'. That's something that should never be in a random roll, same with other kinds of terrible events, like going 'oh btw your character lost his arm before the game started and you suffered a permanent -4 to your PP and PB as well'.

[Alrik Vas]

My buddy walks into this game he spent a good three hours working on a character for. GM tells him to roll %, he gets 100%! He askes what it was for, the GM tells him "For your background", he then flips through a note book, looks up at my friend and says:

"You died, make a new character."

He got up, went to his truck and left, never coming back.

Im sorry, what happened? A roll of 00% meant that his character died before the game started? What was the game?

It was a D&D game, Dark Elf. Yes, my friend's character died before the game even began. The guy running it was apparently a real piece of work.

[Warshield73]

My only really big house rules are:
1- Base 5 attack system: I break every melee into 5, 3 second long attack sequences. For characters that have more then 5 attacks they have extras that they can use for dodging, power punches, aimed attacks or any kind of dual action. This really saves time during combat

2 - Skill Combat: I use this instead of using regular skill penalties. Best example an NPC is trying to call for help during a battle, he has a Radio: Basic skill of 70% and rolls a 43%, I say he "beat" the skill by 27%. A PC has the ECM skill 55% and wants to jam the transmission so he rolls 20% and "beats" the skill by 35%. Since the jamming is higher the transmission is stopped.

As for house rules that don't work I think my worst was system of allowing characters to by skills with experience points. Total disaster.

My buddy walks into this game he spent a good three hours working on a character for. GM tells him to roll %, he gets 100%! He askes what it was for, the GM tells him "For your background", he then flips through a note book, looks up at my friend and says:

"You died, make a new character."

He got up, went to his truck and left, never coming back.

Im sorry, what happened? A roll of 00% meant that his character died before the game started? What was the game?

Sounds like it, and I definitely don't fault his friend for going 'if this is what I can expect, killed before even starting the game, no way I'm wasting my time with this guy as a GM'. That's something that should never be in a random roll, same with other kinds of terrible events, like going 'oh btw your character lost his arm before the game started and you suffered a permanent -4 to your PP and PB as well'.

Wow, I have heard of some crazy GM stuff but death before the first encounter, that is a new one to me. One time in a game I had a player loose his character in the first night to two really stupid crazy rolls and I just told him to change the name, write a completely new back story and start over next week. Guess I'm too soft.

[SpiritInterface]

I think the absolute worst one I can think of was the one where what they GM knew the bad guys knew. So if you didn't want the bad guys to know something you didn't tell the GM.

[Alrik Vas]

I did that once. When i got into the bad guy camp and had joined their crew, learned their numbers and what their plans were (because i was a part of the plan at that point) i told my GM I was a spy and showed him my real character sheet.

He laughed so hard he couldn't help but OK it.

Yeah, the bad guys all ended up with black bags over their heads and interrogated when i got the chance to tell my real allies what was up.

[Nightmask]

My buddy walks into this game he spent a good three hours working on a character for. GM tells him to roll %, he gets 100%! He askes what it was for, the GM tells him "For your background", he then flips through a note book, looks up at my friend and says:

"You died, make a new character."

He got up, went to his truck and left, never coming back.

Im sorry, what happened? A roll of 00% meant that his character died before the game started? What was the game?

Sounds like it, and I definitely don't fault his friend for going 'if this is what I can expect, killed before even starting the game, no way I'm wasting my time with this guy as a GM'. That's something that should never be in a random roll, same with other kinds of terrible events, like going 'oh btw your character lost his arm before the game started and you suffered a permanent -4 to your PP and PB as well'.

Wow, I have heard of some crazy GM stuff but death before the first encounter, that is a new one to me. One time in a game I had a player loose his character in the first night to two really stupid crazy rolls and I just told him to change the name, write a completely new back story and start over next week. Guess I'm too soft.

I had a (I guess now former) friend who'd joined a game after a friend of his suggested he join it, come game night the GM told him that his character had been in a coma prior to game start, his stats were all decreased and he no longer had the same powers (since it was a super-hero game) or skills. Taking him at his word he told everyone that he respectfully would be unable to join the game as apparently his character wasn't there, since the GM had completely screwed over his character so the only thing left of it was its name.

Myself while looking to join a super-hero game the GM was nerfing the few powers my character had (Immortality wasn't so immortal and didn't regenerate as the power explicitly noted it did, and even the separate power of Regeneration wasn't as effective as it should have been), while his buddy (who I'm sure spent many a night telling him I was a munchkin as his buddy had great animosity towards me) had a character with the max number of powers possible (only a 1% chance of that being possible), most where in the top 10 percentile for power level, and his only limitation was he had to avoid religious things like churches and consecrated ground and objects. I simply couldn't get past the first few days of trying because I had so little faith in the GM at that point not screwing me over when he was behaving like that prior to the game.

Another game I never got past the application phase for (the GM despised me and was only going through the motions because one of his friends who was part of the game made the offer) their was apparently a house rule that you couldn't have anything that was as good as anyone else already in the game had. So your character couldn't be as agile, or strong, or as good a fighter, and so on as anyone else already playing and it was a game focused mainly around martial artists fighting bad guys. Which meant you had to be inferior to everyone else in the group because 'well that's his specialty, no one's allowed to be as good as him at that' and given the narrow focus on things there wasn't anything you could be special at when you joined. Probably needless to say but even if I had been approved I doubt I could have stayed in a game like that, although I did tell him off for making me go through hoops trying to make an acceptable character when he had no intentions of approving anything I submitted (then he went onto the game forum to declare how he'd 'found a great player' and they were going fine, just to give the implication that I not he was the reason I never got approved).

[Alrik Vas]

I pray these are all teenagers you're talking about.

but back to bad/good houserules!

Good Houserule: Taking out vehicle AR in SDC modern games, replacing it with high amounts of damage reduction (no, you can't kill the tank with a karate chop)

Bad Houserule: letting everything come down to a 50/50 die roll because you pointed out a rule that contradicts what the GM is doing.

[Nightmask]

I pray these are all teenagers you're talking about.

Unfortunately no, supposedly full grown adults in their 20s or 30s.

but back to bad/good houserules!

Good Houserule: Taking out vehicle AR in SDC modern games, replacing it with high amounts of damage reduction (no, you can't kill the tank with a karate chop)

Bad Houserule: letting everything come down to a 50/50 die roll because you pointed out a rule that contradicts what the GM is doing.

Afraid I haven't any good/bad house rules from the Palladium system, it's the system I've the least experience RPing in (AD&D and classic Marvel RPG being the most common).

[Warshield73]

I pray these are all teenagers you're talking about.

I was thinking the same thing but truthfully the worst GMs and players I have met have all been in there 20's and 30's. Teenagers are all about having fun but too many older gamers are all about showing other people up or worse.

but back to bad/good houserules!

Good Houserule: Taking out vehicle AR in SDC modern games, replacing it with high amounts of damage reduction (no, you can't kill the tank with a karate chop)

Bad Houserule: letting everything come down to a 50/50 die roll because you pointed out a rule that contradicts what the GM is doing.

I don't run that many SDC games (mainly Rifts & Robotech) but on the rare occasions that I do I replace the AR system with the PF or penetration factor from the Compendium of Modern Weapons. How do you work damage reduction.

[Alrik Vas]

I usually do something like Penetration, though not the Compendium's way. A main battle tank might have 300 damage reduction on it's front, 250 sides, 200 rear, the treads probably have 150, the turret would have 225. (Wish i could give you the real values, but not at home and it's been forever since i've done SDC myself)

the SDC of the target areas have this much damage reduction per hit, though armor penetrating (specifically, anti-armor weapons) reduce the damage soak by 1/2 before damage is applied. So certain weapons carried by infantry can still deal with a tank.

Mind you, this is old values, back when a m-79 could do 1d4x100. I'm not sure what about many of the new SDC damage values.

Though honestly, i might just go with how i scale damage in rifts, to simplify. .