Page 2 of 2 FirstFirst 12
Results 11 to 20 of 20

Thread: House Rules

  1. #11
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Jul 2004
    Posts
    125
    Downloads
    81
    Uploads
    0
    We have a huge amount of house rules...

    To start, I don't allow gnomes/half-orcs either. They just don't fit BR.

    However, I do allow half-orogs. They have the same stats as a half orc for bonuses, but then also have a monster level and must choose an extra feat from either power attack or alertness. Bloodline can not start higher than minor.

    We use DR rules for armour, and further reduce the speed of heavy armour wearers to 15, instead of 20.

    In keeping with the tradition of original BR, crossbows do some armour piercing, penetrating the DR of armour.

    The world is truly magic rare - the party, at 6th level, has exactly 2 magic weapons, both +1, and a magic shield +2.

    In keeping with magic rarety, I have reduced the amount of spellcasting priests as well as the arcane casters. There is approximately 800 spellcasting priests/paladins and about 200 true magic wielders spread across Cerilia. This means that having a paladin/priest or wizzie in your party is a major undertaking... and I play up the roleplaying aspect, that priests of enemy faiths, even of good align, and wizzies, are often set upon by local peoples, or looked upon with distrust. (wizard almost was burned at the stake once for casting a spell and being seen).

    To further heighten the differences between the races, and to make characters more commonly choose racially preferred classes, all races must choose their highest ability score(s) to be in their race's favoured attribute. Thus, a dwarf MUST put their 2 highest rolled attributes in str and con, an anuirean their highest in wisdom, a vos in strength, a brecht in dex. While this doesn't eliminate a character from choosing other classes, it promotes certain styles of play. It means that a dwarven wizard is a TRUE rarity, but unlike 2E, is still possible. Meanwhile, anuirean characters are more likely to be priests or nobles.

    I allow wizards to double specialize, racially specific, to increase the power of magic. What's that mean? Well, for instance, Anuireans favour the schools of evocation and divination. So, they become specialized in both schools, but lose the shunned school of enchantment, the disfavoured school of illusion, and one additional school (as div only makes you lose one). Elves can specialize in enchantment and illusion, losing evocation, necromancy, conjuration, and one additional. This gives 2 bonus spells a day, which pretty well removes the appeal of sorcerers if the player decides to play one of these, while still keeping some of the spell selection open, albeit at a reduced amount. Nearly all wizards encountered will be specialized or double specialized. The extra spell a day, plus the bonus on DC checks, considering how long magic research can take, as well as how expensive it can be, means that a wizard may become powerful before they die of old age... because the chance of encountering other wizzies that you can take spell books from is not that high. Exception: Imperial college of magic, where you can study up to 3rd level spells, but requires lots of money!

    More detailed critical hit system.

  2. #12
    Special Guest (Donor)
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Location
    southwest Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    563
    Downloads
    140
    Uploads
    1
    Quote Originally Posted by epicsoul
    To start, I don't allow gnomes/half-orcs either. They just don't fit BR.
    I don't allow them, but i don't consider it a house rule. Gnomes and half-orcs are not part of the Birthright rules, so i consider it a standard rule. But that's just semantics.

    I do recall reading once, somewhere, that gnomes were intended to be included in Birthright. For some reason they didn't make it into the core rules. IIRC, they would have been extremely closely tied to nature (perhaps even moreso than elves). So standard 3E gnomes wouldn't work anyways.

    Personally, i think there is enough going on anyways.

    IMC, i allow goblin PCs. There are enough of them. They can be civilized, and they pose no balance issues.


    -Fizz

  3. #13
    I don't believe that in over 20 years of playing D&D, I have ever either played a gnome, DMed for a group of PCs that included a gnome, nor been part of a party that included a PC gnome.

    To a power gamer like myself, in "vanilla" 3rd edition humans trump everything.

  4. #14
    While I am not currently running in, nor playing, a BR game (or any, for that matter), I have been considering modifying Malhavoc's Iron Heroes and Arcana Unearthed/Evolved systems, and combining them with Birthright.

    Each of the systems have certain traits that draw me to them:

    Birthright - The setting. It and Al-Qadim have always been my preferred settings since their respective releases. In addition, the Domain rules, even if never used by the players, can greatly aid in keeping the world moving, and provide numerous adventure hooks for events that happen "behind the scenes." Add to the mix the semi-divine nature of the regents and scions, and it makes for an intriguing and interesting world.

    Iron Heroes - Expanded mastery feats, and classes designed for a low to non-magical setting. The focus is less on what the latest enchanted pointy metal thing you found was and more on the skills and abilities of the people. Given the general lack of magic I've always seen Birthright as having (outside of Sidhelien and blooded scions, magic is limited.) There's also the draw of a character being able to start the game using her family's ancestral sword, and continue to do so throughout her life. In standard D&D a character is willing to toss aside that "heirloom blade" the first time she stumbles on a conveniently common "+1 sword", while with this that heirloom blade could be one of the defining characteristics of the chararacter, and tales told of the character's deeds could spread to the point that recognition of the blade alone could influence a situation.

    Arcana Unearthed/Evolved - The way magic works. It's not a case of "fire and forget", which eliminates having to deal with the power disparity, real or imagined, between sorcerors and wizards. Various templates that can be applied to spells to alter the way they work, as well as the heightened/diminished effects, make those who use magic more flexible. This particular system, however, would require the greatest work to bring into the mix. Splitting magic back out into divine and arcane, and balance work between those who can use magic and those who can't, especially when compared to the Iron Heroes systems.

  5. #15
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Jul 2004
    Posts
    125
    Downloads
    81
    Uploads
    0
    House rule # 4 of BR for me:

    Reinforcing what was in 2e -
    Blooded PCs, and infamous villains/awnshegh, have 4d6 choosing the best 3 for stats, in any order, with 7 rolls, and one assigned to bloodline.

    ANY other character, including henchmen, most of the lesser critters/monsters/goblin cannon fodder has 3d6 rolled 6 times, IN ORDER of attribute (so, str, dex, Con, Int, wis, cha). Can't even adjust around.
    Further, these critters/characters must take the DMG basic classes, rather than PC classes - so, warriors rather than fighters, experts instead of rogues, and so on. Eventually, if a henchman survives long enough, they may be able to multi-class. Rare exceptions are made - mostly for the favoured classes of races/human cultures.

    This means that the PCs, and some villains, are truly divine - way above the regular person, who at best will have one exceptional attribute.

    I allow training rule for hp. This makes for truly powerful demi-humans - elves and dwarves. Why? Because it can be assumed that any elf or dwarf encountered of any age has had time to train to max or near max hp - a significant advantage over the lesser races - and, incidentally, allowing that elven fighter of equal level to take on 2 human fighters of equal level, almost - due to being able to take way more damage from near-max hp. Makes it interesting - ALL elven warriors at 1st have 8 hp, just like a pc has max HP - but the average human warrior will only have 4. Thus, the elf can fell the human with one hit, meanwhile, the human will only probably wound the elf, who lives to fight another day...

    As has been noted previously, I don't care about game balance one whit.

  6. #16
    Yuck. I loathe any random ability generation with a fiery passion.

  7. #17
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Location
    Lacalfiusa
    Posts
    110
    Downloads
    1
    Uploads
    0
    Amen to that.

    However, some players DO enjoy the challenge of a random draw to create (part of) a new character to roleplay, a sort of "acting school excercise", if you will, improv at it's most challenging. So, in the final ed of this game, we should include a way to randomly generate most all aspects for characters, which would work to generate either PC's or NPC's, as desired. Flexibility of the rules, covering all the bases and letting the players decide, is never a bad thing, and in this case is a zero cost proposition.

    All of these houserules are fine, and some very interesting spins, but some seem targetted more toward a particular group or GM's play-preference than dealing with a problem with the game. More detailed battle systems are fine for those who enjoy such (like me!), but I don't think the abstract system currently in play is "broken", just very simple. If someone wants gnomes, they add gnomes, but that's not a comment on the Rules As Written, which, to be honest, might be more productive given our task here than "I do/don't like gnomes".

    (Including rules for goblin, (half-)orog and gnoll Player Characters, races which all "could" interact with humans, might not be a bad idea. And maybe thumbnail rules for expanding PC races, if any GM ever wanted to go there.)

    As to the question of Magic Item Creation, has any attempt been made to actually place strictures that would limit such? If a dedicated Character wanted to go into the item creation bussiness, what's to slow them down, other than some narrative comments? Suggestion: double, triple (or more!) the XP cost for magic. Similarly, increase the time by some multiple. Thus, a mage must truly "put some of themselves" into magic items.

    -----------------------------

    When I opened this thread, I hoped to see more observations on perceived problems within the game, and individual solutions to those. I know that there are many excellent Play-by-Post games that approach the game from the top-down side (politics > characters, politicking > adventuring), and that have established house rules to maintain balance at that level. Some of those house rules go on for a page or two, plus more explanation/interpretation. Maybe mentioning some of those, as insights to how a large game of BR doesn't work the same as a smaller, table-top, "me and my friend's character" based one?

    Some deal with battle or mercenaries (to avoid first turn pre-emptive military actions that can be common, apparently), some with more narrowly defining court actions or free actions, some limitting Ltnts and what you can/can't do with them, etc. All these yield "playtest" observations of what in the BRCS (or 2nd ed) rules are potential trouble spots, and insight to how they might be addressed.

    I'll do some digging- I'd ask others familiar w/ pbem games to do the same.

  8. #18
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    Jul 2004
    Posts
    125
    Downloads
    81
    Uploads
    0
    Okay, less specific for personal preference rules I use:

    Occupation: As many of my domain level games inevitably have war at some point, one thing I have always hated is that one realm conquers another so easily. Especially because of the tactic of saving up lots of GB, hiring a big army almost instantly (even with optional variant: building musters), then blitzkrieging the other land. Part of this is related to other debates previously had on this site regarding scale - let's not get into that. Suffice to say that I increase the scales of the map of Cerilia.

    Once overrun, the land is quickly divested - if not in one season, by the next. Now, if the ruler is captured, great, all power to ya.

    Otherwise, unless the province is occupied with units equal to the rating of the province level, levy units could rise up to attack the occupiers - every round. This is dependent on what the loyalty rating of the province was before the land was occupied - so, if it was hostile, a levy unit may actually rise up and serve WITH the occupiers to defend against any counterattack. A diplo check is made by the local commander, or by the conqueror regent to see if rebellion is averted.

    Sure, regular troops can beat on levies fairly easily... but every round? Occupiers could be destroyed eventually.

    What this means is that a very large army is necessary to conquer large territories. Instead, wars are fought over provinces usually, with provinces switching hands fairly constantly. The defender has the chance to acquire additional funds (from handy guilders!) to raise a defence, and counter-attack.

    Otherwise, here's what happens in every game I see: Diemed raises a large army in the first action - it leaves the troops one province away from Medoere, so no scout can see it. 2nd turn, or possibly action 1.3, it goes to war. Overruns all of Medoere in 4 moves. Roesone may come to assistance, Ilien lacks army. 2nd turn rolls around, no rp and GB collection for Medoere due to being occupied. Thus, no rp to resist divestiture.

    Only thing Suris Enlien can do: burn her bloodline to gain rp to resist investiture.

    Now, of course, this is a nice simple example that does not factor in wizardly support, temple support, or even guilders. Leaving the politics aside, however, conquest is relatively easy. I wanted to slow it down. Another example I had experienced was when Mesire, in 2 turns, conquered half of the Khinasi lands. Obviously, something is broken when half a region is blitzed in 6 months.

    Now, some will say I wasn't doing my duty as a DM - either by taking away their GB, or whatever. Fact is, I had been. Standing armies just can't withstand 100GB cost army assaults. But, you sputter, how did they get 100GB? Player solidarity, damn it! The guilder, temple holder, and mage, working together, amassed a small fortune by the third turn, then contributed it all to the ruler - who proceeded to raze every holding he found to pay for the army and its replacements.

    We ended the game right there. A five turn game. The npc's could have fought back, sure. But even making a comeback, EVERY law, temple and guild holding not belonging to the PCs in a 5 province radius was razed. Some provinces were razed, and others invested.

    There would have been little point to continuing. Even the players were stunned by their success.

    Perhaps I, as a DM, could have been better prepared - but the players "tricked" me into thinking that they were going to work at some cross-purposes - and had a private session w/o their DM stating what they would do. The war started small, but quickly expanded to other realms, which they also stomped on. By the time that other powers, including guilds and temples mobilized, it was quite late.

    Admittedly, I wasn't using building muster variant then. I made sure to next game. Similar situations occurred. When I made rebellions more common, it stopped.

  9. #19
    Junior Member
    Join Date
    Apr 2005
    Posts
    6
    Downloads
    8
    Uploads
    0

    House Rules

    I have DM'd several Birthright campaigns and each time I keep expanding on my house rules. My preferred method of character creation is for me to make the characters. I know this goes against traditional gameplay, but my campaigns tend to come from more of a story angle then the traditional games. I find it is much easier to tell the story when I have made the characters. I allow the players to fill in some of the incedentals (feats, skills points, spells known, etc), but I create everything else. I find this actually frees the players up to concentrate on roleplaying and less on game mechanic accounting. For my next campaign I am going to take it one step further and basically control the players level advancement. This isnt to say the player won't have some choice, but the storyline will limit their options. Again this just makes it so the player doesnt have to think about mechanics too much and it hamstrings any attempts at powergaming. My most successful campaign ever was my first Birthright campaign when I made the characters. The players took right to it and we had some of the best roleplaying ever.

    I like what ive read about the more gritty combat styles and I will probably use the wounds system to keep players in check a bit. I think I am gonna stick with the basic spellcasting system (cause its easy), but as someone suggested earlier I might look into using the Midnight system (it is a cool setting) especially given my next modification.

    There are going to be a couple of significant differences in my newest Birthright campaign. First is I am going to include martial classes from the Book of Nine Swords. There will be a Warblade, Crusader, and a Swordsage in the party. Martial classes can only be taken by characters with a Bloodline or by Elves in the case of Swordsages. So while the Book of Nine Swords is powerful there will be a limited number of martial classes in the world. By limiting the number of martial classes it wont ruin the low magic feel of Birthright because it is more of a variety at the high levels of magic then any real proliferation of magic. Basically it will be domain rulers and such who will be martial classes. I am even adding a martial academy to the Royal City of Anuire so that young up and coming rulers could have trained with each other. Second I am going to incorporate some elements of Eberron into the Birthright world. I wont go into much detail but I am bringing over Dragon Marks and the Dragon Marked Houses, Artificers (Blooded and Dwarf only), the existence of the Daelkyr and their Abberations, and Dragons and the Draconic Prophecy. All of these elements will be modified to fit in with the BR setting, but I think it will add some more depth to the game world.

  10. #20
    Junior Member
    Join Date
    Aug 2006
    Posts
    22
    Downloads
    16
    Uploads
    0
    I'm using a revised rules for warfare more akin to a wargaming game than an AD&D game. We've added effects revolving around magic, but primarily this system is a strategic system for muster, travel, and siege that becomes a tactical system that makes use of the player's abilities in that field more than the character's.

    -5 penalty on unskilled checks.

    Variant success rates on domain actions - some actions can be successful but over a longer period than anticipated.

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Tags for this Thread

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •  
BIRTHRIGHT, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, D&D, the BIRTHRIGHT logo, and the D&D logo are trademarks owned by Wizards of the Coast, Inc., a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc., and are used by permission. ©2002-2010 Wizards of the Coast, Inc.