I've written about what house rules I've used in my old school games before, but it's been awhile and I wanted to revisit them. Especially after running a few sessions of Stonehell.So far it's been pretty by the book, though I've already taken advantage of Meatshields. Thus far my players haven't yet learned the benefit of having... well... meatshields in their party. Some of this might be related to the lack of treasure they've managed to collect so far. But beyond that... there are a couple of things I've been thinking about.
Shields Shall Be Splintered - There's a couple of versions of this one kicking around. As kind of a death saving throw, it isn't bad. Stretches out combat potentially.
Death and Dismemberment - Yet another version of a death saving throw, this one taking place after the players drop to 0, so it keeps combat deadly, but you might survive if your party wins the fight.
Mortal Wounds - The ACKs version of the rule above.
If I go with one of these, it'll only be one. But which one?
Criticals - Double damage? Max damage? Something cool?
Dutch Courage: Any character may heal themselves by spending twenty minutes binding their wounds, catching their breath, and consuming a pint of wine. Doing so heals the character of 1d6 points of damage. This method of first aid may only be used once per day.
2d6 Thief Skills - THe poor thief in BX is just... kinda sad. This does something to help even them out a bit.
Order of the d30 - 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.
Town is boring, the adventure is in the dungeon/wilderness! I've been doing this one already. Since my goal was an old school dungeon crawl, I didn't want to spend any extraneous time outside of the dungeon sandbox
Rather than just drop these on my players, at my own whim, I think I'm going to talk to them about it, and see what they'd like to do...
I've been thinking about the type of fantasy game I'd like to run.
ReplyDeleteCertainly some sort of sanity level would figure in there. D20 Call of Cthulhu has a sanity level based on 5*WIS which reduces with trauma. You check for breaks at certain thresholds. I havent looked at it for a long time, so not sure if it's 'the one' or not.
I liked using ACKS for falling below 0. It reminds me of warhammer fantasy crits, but less lethal.
Giving the players a single re-roll per game session (each) is sorta fun too.
I was wondering if you went with any specific house rules here. If so which one's? I'm going to run a StoneHell campaign as a first time DM.
ReplyDeleteCurrently I'm using the 2d6 thief rules, double dice on a critical, dutch courage, and town is boring.
DeleteFor my game, I use shields shall be splintered and a death and dismemberment table. This has resulted in basically no deaths (though some have lost limbs). Kinda wish there were more deaths tho. These two things also seem to keep people from bringing along hirelings and henchmem more often too. As for town, I make it more of a non-RP minigame where people can use the market, listen to rumors, gamble, and carouse for xp (100gp = 1xp and a roll on the carousing tables). Each session starts in town, which allows for the rotating cast of chatacters, west marches-style. I'm pretty happy with how town has been working, but I could still do more to make it go faster.
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