Key Our Cars

This is the list of house rules I’ll be using for my upcoming game(s).  There are others that I’d use that would vary by the level of the party and if it was planned to be a long term permanent group and even by the party make up, but these are some basic changes that fit across all facets of the game for me.

This isn’t a “do you think these are stupid/awesome” post, just a post for those that are curious as to how I’ve changed or tweaked things for my own twisted Evil DM needs.

The tokens are to encourage the party to use dailies more often, let them pool resources and to have more non-at will spamminess.   I don’t think it will be a problem at all for my table, yours might not be so lucky if you have CharOP – Min/Maxers – Power Gamers.  If it turns out to boost the power output in a unbalancing way, then as the DM I’ll adjust the damage sinks as needed (duh).

The damage and health is to shorten combats a little primarily as far as the players are concerned but honestly it gives me a larger XP budget to play with which means more monsters which means bigger brougha’s.  One of the encounters I currently have planned has 25 monsters that will be facing the party.  Yes they’re mostly minions but I think it’ll make for an interesting fight because of the powers the creatures have.

Healing changes are to counteract the damage output of the players.  They can now ‘react’ with a healing word or whatever when a player is close to dying without having to wait for their turn.  I honestly don’t want to kill the players, I just want to give them enough resources that they can survive if they play smart, barring just asinine die rolls.  And frankly as a player it sucks to skip your turns because the healer is too busy to heal you. I try to avoid suckage where I can.

The resting is to encourage (force) the players to have at least two encounters a day.   I’ll admit in a CRPG like Balders Gate or Neverwinter Nights that I’d go into each encounter at full strength.  I think 4th edition lands in a great spot to encourage that not to happen.  I just want to reinforce that with the resting limitation and the recharge token gathering.

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House Rules

Recharge Tokens
At the end of each encounter a character earns a Recharge Token.  These can be used to recharge or ‘untap’ expended Encounter or Daily powers or gain a to-hit bonus on At-Will powers.  They can be accrued during the day but are reset to one at the end of an extended rest.  A player may transfer one token per extended rest to another player.  Multiple players may transfer one token to the same player. They are spent as such:

• 1 token to gain +4 to hit with a single attack roll for an At-Will power.  This can be done no more than twice per encounter and once per turn.
• 2 tokens to recharge one expended Encounter power.  This can be done no more than twice per encounter and once per turn.
• 4 tokens to recharge one expended Daily power. This can be done once per short rest.

Damage
All damage rolls for PC and NPC gain 1/2 level in damage.  This damage is added to the first damage roll only in the case of multiple attacks per power. 

Monster Hit Points
Monsters reduced in hit points by 25%.
Monster XP reduced by 25% including for encounter budget purposes.
(i.e. 25% more monsters that go down 25% faster, this of course does nothing to change the combat time since the total hit point sink remains the same but gives the DM (me) more resources and ups the body count.)

Healing
Healing powers, items and effects heal for an additional +1/2 level of the target of the healing. – (To balance the increased damage intake)
Healing powers in general become Immediate Reactions (Trigger: When you or an ally is wounded) and follow the normal limitations of Immediate Actions (once per combat round).

Resting
The party must reach a Milestone before taking an Extended Rest.  Milestones are reached after each two non-trivial encounters.  This rule can be superseded by DM fiat.