House Rule Opinions

[Hywaywolf]

The problem here is that they are choosing weapons to get the best stats like this is just a game. In old school you choose the weapon that fits the type of character you are playing. Hell, many people give their characters crazy flaws that jeopardise their life quite often just because its fun to play a character that way.

I sometimes find myself doing the same thing, choose a weapon simply because of the stats, but I try to keep that to a minimum. I mean, its a story we are writing, but I don't want to die in it either.

I had the idea to use bonuses to make them different. Club, hammers and axes get +1 damage and -1 to hit but it is rather rough and still needs work.

If you want to help match the weapon to its historical class, then tie the bonuses to class. Like dwarves get a +1 when using axe or hammer.

[DSmaster21]

My ideas are not really designed to make the characters much better but to make the characters interesting early on.

Also now that I went back to page one I now have read a post that exposes that I have read the rules wrong. To determine health I was rolling the hit die and adding the constitution modifier. I apologize for my foolhardy behavior in thinking that adding +5 the possible constitution modifier would not hurt anything.

[LibraryLass]

Just... damn.
1d20 stats are gonna be ridiculously swingy. If your players want to start with higher stats that is exactly the wrong way to go about it.

If obvious non-mechanical applications don't differentiate weapons enough for your players a weapons-vs.-armor chart might be handy. This one was posted to a blog I follow as an April fools' joke, but if you leave off the fish-slapping and the "miracle English longbows" line (which is obviously facetious), I think it'll work fine:

[DSmaster21]

Just... damn.
1d20 stats are gonna be ridiculously swingy. If your players want to start with higher stats that is exactly the wrong way to go about it.

If obvious non-mechanical applications don't differentiate weapons enough for your players a weapons-vs.-armor chart might be handy. This one was posted to a blog I follow as an April fools' joke, but if you leave off the fish-slapping and the "miracle English longbows" line (which is obviously facetious), I think it'll work fine:

The idea is to make one or more of your stats feel very special despite not being overly important. Also I did move the +0 down one to help make the lower stats have even less effect.

[Solomoriah]

Also now that I went back to page one I now have read a post that exposes that I have read the rules wrong. To determine health I was rolling the hit die and adding the constitution modifier. I apologize for my foolhardy behavior in thinking that adding +5 the possible constitution modifier would not hurt anything.

I'm not sure what you are saying here.

The standard rule is that, for every level (including the first) up until 9th level, you roll the given Hit Die and add the Constitution bonus. So a fighter with 16 CON (+2) rolls 1d8+2 each level.

It sounds like that's exactly what you are saying that you did, and that you now think is wrong. So I'm confused as to what you are saying.

Giving maximum HP at first level is a common tweak (heck, I do it) to beef up starting characters a bit.

[Hywaywolf]

I think he means he is using a 1d20 to roll ability scores and giving up to +5 bonuses. So this method was doing more than he intended.

[SmootRK]

Too far from standard methods with 'standard' point distributions on the traditional "bell curves" for my tastes.

Like I was saying before, there are better methods of getting players 'engaged' with their characters than trying to overhaul a system that has been working really well for 40-ish years. Small tweaks here and there, sure... but radical switches that fundamentally affect characters, and likely has further-reaching ramifications into other areas of the game... those kind of changes require much more thought and testing...

.... and in the end, these still don't (really) address the issue of getting people to connect with characters. Stat Bonuses don't do that. "Experiences" with the character are what do it.

[DSmaster21]

Looking back at my ideas, I now don't really like them.

I think they comes from the fact that in an attempt to better understand rpgs I went and looked at several. I bought the red box and downloaded Swords and Wizardry, Labryrinth Lord, Dark Dungeons and even some pdfs from 3.5 D&D. So I got a ton of ideas but was not really tied to any system. I have mostly settled into this one and have been obsessively making character sheets and can see how the ideas I had would not really work.

I still want to raise the prime requisite range and come up with a character class for "hopeless characters".

[Joe the Rat]

On hopeless characters: I recommend "roll again." If it's not playable, don't play it.

[artikid]

The land of nod blog has some posts with ideas on character types defined by ability scores. Unplayable characters are "underdogs" with their own set of special abilities...

http://matt-landofnod.blogspot.it/2013/ ... -rpgs.html