Key Our Cars

Someone asked about what house rules I thought were good or actually used.  So here’s a rough list of the ones I think are more useful or use for what it’s worth sorted by what they affect:

Combat speed –

+2 to hit for everyone. Easy simple way to speed combats up by 10% for everyone, reduces annoyance when encounters and dailies miss by 10%, etc. It also has a more subtle effect that it reduces the ‘value’ of high stats in a marginal way.  It seems like an easy way to add to the player and DM enjoyment (missing sucks) without drastically affecting the game. Â  It does mean on average the players will take more damage per round so healing becomes more of a concern.

Character Class/Race-

Racial stat bonus change. Non-Human races get +2 to any stat, +1 to a racial stat. (Based on) Humans get +2 to any stat and +1 to any stat, these cannot be used on the same stat.

Class powers. Paladins get the option of Divine Challenge or Sacred Warding.

Character backgrounds.  The players have the option to pick a general background and they then have knowledge of that background which can provide bonuses to skill checks.  i.e. a player can pick tanner and as a result have knowledge of animals, hides, certain chemicals etc.

Game Mechanics –

Exploding Dice for skill checks. Summation, roll 3d6 untrained, 4d6 trained, 5d6 trained+skill focus for a skill check.  Every time a six is rolled add 1d6 to the total.  DC’s run from 10 to 30 ignoring 1/2 per level as a pointless mechanic. Yes it means that barring stat mod increase or adding feats that a character’s skills don’t ‘grow’ but I’m good with that since the existing ‘growth’ mechanic is purely pretend, ignore the man behind the curtain.

Heroic Recovery.  Once per encounter a player may attempt to recover an Encounter power.  The attempt consumes two healing surges and requires a Fortitude vs DC 15 to succeed.  Upon success one encounter power is refreshed and able to be used again.  Upon failure the healing surges are lost and the player may not attempt to recover that power until an extended rest.

Extended Rests.  The party must have achieved at least one milestone before extended rests provide recovery of powers.  A milestone is determined as having had two non-trivial encounters.

Mooks.  A filler between Minions and Standards the Mook when it takes damage makes a standard saving throw.  If it fails the saving throw it dies.  If it succeeds it’s bloodied and upon taking any further damage of any kind it dies.