What house rules do you use?

[Vanguard]

Hey,

I'm getting ready to run a T20 campaign with a merchantish bent. I've only run T20 once, and I'm looking for house rules that anyone has found useful.

I'm planning on using the playtest draft Travellers Handbook rules, along with some custom tweaks:

I'll be using some custom Psi rules based on Ken Hood's Psi rules. I like Ken's rules, but they don't have an equivalant of psi points, and I feel those are important.

I'll probably also replace the THB martial artist with Ken Hood's martial artist rules.

Each class will get a defense bonus (treated as a dodge bonus) equal to their BAB (for melee only) or base reflex save, whichever is better. Armor will not increase AC, but will still provide damage reduction as per the standard rules.

I might adapt the flaws system (sort of antifeats that you take in exchange for free feats) or the traits system (taken at character creation, a benefit and penalty that go together) from D&D's Unearthed Arcana.

Anyone else have any house rules covering things they feel need to be changed in the standard system? Anyone think any of the above house rules are broken?

 

[mike wightman]

The main house rules I would use are:
use 2d10 instead of d20;
use a defence bonus (which you've already got);
player's choice of STR or DEX bonus for to hit rolls in melee combat;
a critical hit can either ignore armour or cause multiple damage, but not both.

More later.

 

[Flynn]

Personally, here's some that I use:

* 32 Point Buy across the 9 primary stats for building characters;
* Homeworld grants you three bonus skill points instead of varying depending on if a skill can be used untrained or not;
* Melee combat can use Str instead of Dex with the use of the appropriate feat found in the Player's Guide playtest material;
* Toying with BAB modified by either Dex or Int for indirect and ship-based weapons, replacing the Gunnery skill, but won't introduce that in the current campaign for consistency's sake.
* I use an expanded Aid Another skill system from the Epic Level Handbook, in which every ten points you exceed the base DC 10 to aid another (or DC 5 if Leadership skill is used successfully) adds an additional +1 to the amount of aid you give to another character.

Also, comments on your rules suggestions:
* Defense bonus makes it a lot easier to survive a gun fight, which really doesn't capture the Traveller flavor. I like my PCs thinking twice before going into a situation with guns blazing. Just something to think about.
* I have found that using the Psionicist prestige class from the playtest material (also found in TA5: Mind Over Matter) fixes many of my personal problems with psionics, as we are playtesting that in my current campaign. I will still probably design a skill-based system (based on my article posted over at Freelance Traveller) for my next campaign, but I can say that the official system does work when using that prestige class, based on my experience.
* I don't have much of an opinion one way or the other in regards to traits or flaws.

Ultimately, though, it all depends on the flavor of the game you want to run.

Best of luck,
Flynn

 

[Vanguard]

Thanks for the thoughts guys!

I'm kinda torn on the point buy. It's a nice balancing factor, but everything gets thrown out of balance with the random process of prior history...why do you prefer point buy?

I was actually considering using 2d10 and 1d20. Two different possibilities:

-Use 2d10 for "normal" situations, use 1d20 for combat or other "chaotic" situations

-Let the player choose which he would like to roll. 2d10 represents a conservative approach, 1d20 represents high-risk, high-reward behavior. Appropriate role-playing of the action based on the die choice would be required.

I like the defense bonus because I like to know the difference between a miss and a hit that does no damage. When armor reduces the chance to "hit" a character, it really means that some "misses" are actually hits that did no damage.

It also implies that the combat experience of a character has nothing to do with their defensive abilities.

I will agree that using a defense bonus changes survivability, but I'm not sure if it's clear-cut that a defense bonus increases it.

Let's pretend that Cloth is the armor of choice. It has an AC of +6

A single-classed Traveller would need to be a decently high level to have his defense bonus be better than the armor (level 10 or so).

To me, it seems that a dodge defense bonus for class levels, plus removing the armor bonus to AC,
plus making the armor's "Max dex bonus" into "max dodge bonus" makes the game a bit less survivable at low levels, a bit more survivable at high levels. It also encourages players to stay away from the heavier armors unless you are pretty sure you'll be taking hits.

All that being said, I'm not sure that combat experience should improve your defense in a gun-fight. An experienced modern combatant knows that the only way to not get shot is to get cover, which is already in the rules. Do you think it would be too deadly if we let the defense bonus stuff above only apply to melee, and gun combat ignores all defense bonuses?

 

[Flynn]

I don't have much of an opinion on the defense bonuses other than what I stated before, but I can see where you're coming from, and it is a valid approach to dealing with combat. Follow your preferences and see where it takes you. Perhaps run it as a One Shot and see if you like it. If not, you can try something else in another One Shot to see if you like it better.

As for Point Buy, I prefer it because it brings the ability scores down to something reasonable. Otherwise, I get too great a disparity between characters, and some players start feeling less capable because of poor die rolls during character creation. I don't like putting up with the petty bickering between sessions, so I use Point Buy.

Hope that helps,
Flynn

 

[mike wightman]

Getting rid of an armour's AC bonus and replacing it with a defence bonus for melee combat will probably make gun combat even more deadly since targets will get hit a lot more often.
It'll teach your players a lesson in the omportance of cover, concealment, and not getting into gun fights in the first place.

 

[BetterThanLife]

I use the following house rules.
Passage and cargo price is paid per parsec, not per jump. (Makes more sense to me and appears to be a quick and dirty fix to the economics.) Been using that rule change IMTU for years.

I am about to use a modification to try to fix the more blatant problems with Starship combat. (Not sure exactly how well this will work because I have only limited testing of it so far but it goes into the campaign I am about to start up.) Eliminate the gunnery skill. Go with BAB for gunnery. (It eliminates the use PMOS for Gunnery Skill, so all combat rolls actually have to be "rolls.") (Standard Naval gunners get the Marshall Feat instead of gunnery specialization or something, making them almost on par with Marine Gunners.) Spinals lose the +5 to crit number. No starship weapons have a crit multiple of greater than x3. Meson and Fusion weapons are still nasty but not the one shot one hit one kill variety anymore. Especially the Spinal Meson, Gunnery Specialization, PMOS combination which auto kills everything up to 8 Million tons.) Also instead of a flat 16D for damage for Spinals regardless of factor go with FactorD damage for Spinals. (Gives you a reason to actually install bigger Spinal mounts.)

Since I am not running an active duty Naval campaign yet I will only really get to play with half the results of the changes in the next campaign but we shall see what happens next.

 

[Shadowdancer]

Our primary house rule is that when you multiclass into a new class, if you already have one of the feats the new class gives for starting the class, you get to pick another feat from that class' bonus feat list instead.

 

[veltyen]

Our primary house rule is that when you multiclass into a new class, if you already have one of the feats the new class gives for starting the class, you get to pick another feat from that class' bonus feat list instead.

Isn't that a little on the gratuitous side? Multiclassing already has enough advantages. I shudder to think of the rogue, marine(4), merc(5), scout(3), traveller(3) jack of all trades based character. 5th level with JOT of +7, and 9 extra marine and merc feats. It is a nice idea, it seems unfair initially for the lost potential, I've thought about this myself, before discarding it for the above reason.

 

[Vanguard]

I agree that a free class feat for every starting feat you already have is a bit much. It seems like most of the classes have the marksman feat, so you'd be getting a free feat quite a bit.

I think I saw some other people mention giving out brownie points/bonuses on promotion rolls for every starting feat you already have. I think I like these systems better.

 

[veltyen]

House rule on radiation damage. Handled normally up until damage resolution. For each ten points of radiation damage there is one point of SI damage and a critical roll. ie. An attack doing 35 points of normal damage and 21 points of radiation damage would take 38 SI, a normal crit roll, 3 radiation crit rolls.

 

[Shadowdancer]

Originally posted by veltyen:
Isn't that a little on the gratuitous side? Multiclassing already has enough advantages. I shudder to think of the rogue, marine(4), merc(5), scout(3), traveller(3) jack of all trades based character. 5th level with JOT of +7, and 9 extra marine and merc feats. It is a nice idea, it seems unfair initially for the lost potential, I've thought about this myself, before discarding it for the above reason.

Hmmm, I see where there could be grounds for abuse of that rule. We've only rolled up one set of characters using it, and since no one multiclassed into more than three classes (and no military service classes), it didn't create a big problem.

Next time we roll up characters, I might look at the brownie point option or something similar.

 

[Falkayn]

Originally posted by Vanguard:
I'm getting ready to run a T20 campaign with a merchantish bent. I've only run T20 once, and I'm looking for house rules that anyone has found useful.

<SNIP>

I'll be using some custom Psi rules based on Ken Hood's Psi rules. I like Ken's rules, but they don't have an equivalant of psi points, and I feel those are important.

I'll probably also replace the THB martial artist with Ken Hood's martial artist rules.

Each class will get a defense bonus (treated as a dodge bonus) equal to their BAB (for melee only) or base reflex save, whichever is better. Armor will not increase AC, but will still provide damage reduction as per the standard rules.

<SNIP>

Anyone think any of the above house rules are broken?

I love Ken Hood's psionic and martial artist rulesm which is one reason I host copies of them on my website.

However, for a merchant campaign I would question the need for that nasty a set of psionic/martial artist rules. In practice I've found they greatly lengthen the character creation process, and make combat even nastier than it already is.

If your game had the sort of high-tech healing rules that Ken's Sleeping Imperium had, and was as combat oriented as Ken's was, then that makes sense. However in an otherwise standard Traveller milieu I think you'll find that you'll be adding complexity to a part of the system that a bunch of merchants shouldn't be messing around with much (granted, they could be ethically challenged ... ).

 

[Vanguard]

With my group, I'm sure they'll be ethically challenged.

I like to offer them as options to characters who will be focusing in those areas, but most of the party probably won't take anything from either of those sets of rules. I will probably not allow the psionicist from Ken's rules (at least not without some heavy tweaking) simply because last time I did, and one character was overpowered from taking most of his levels in it. I think it might work a bit better with some version of psi points.

I'm not really worried about it though, I doubt we'll have a Zhodani noble and his wife, the Zho secret agent, in the party this time...ok, well at least I HOPE we don't have that again.

 

[jasper]

Finish prior service and adjust stats before picking skills.
Ignore the int skill restriction. Treat as any other stat ability.
Aging comes from 3.5 rules.
Weapon ranges are double on some weapon(I play with gun nuts/gurus)

 

[veltyen]

Gun house rules must be the most common I'm sure

Basic weapons as listed. Linear cost for extended clips in most cases (ie player can set the clip size).

Weapons have variations. These include:
Heavy: Double weight and cost, extra dice damage
Long Barrel: Range +50% double weight and cost
Multi-barrel: As per appendage rules

Mostly these are useful for vehicle weapons (no-one is going to carry a long barrel heavy gatling(6) gauss rifle), but heavy long barrel makes a decent AMR out of most basic rifles, and a double barreled shottie never goes astray. The difference between heavy and gatling is that the heavy damage gets multiplied on a critical, but gatling uses the standard ammo. Heavy ammo can be hard to find.

Between the feat far shot, and the long barrel designation rifle ranges come out to be a little more realistic this way.

Pistol ranges divided by 10. As it stands a heavy pistol (out of TA1) has a longer effective range then a carbine, something I feel is a little unrealistic. Pistols are still killers at point blank, but no sniping.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Actually effective gun ranges against a paper/pop-up target are definitely a bit longer than against a moving enemy. And quite a bit longer than against a moving resisting target (ie. shooting back at you.). In real life combat ranges are usually down to under 100M. Even most hunting targets are under 200M. (And deer don't shoot back.) So while "gun experts" can claim they routinely hit targets at 400M. And have no problems with targets at 1000M, it isn't the same as hitting an evading man sized target when bullets are hitting your cover. Go ahead and shoot the tires out of a speeding evading car with your Assault Rifle set on rock and roll at 100M. (You will be lucky to even hit the car.) FBI and Military Snipers had a real difficult time hitting the simulated presidential limo from the book depository much less the simulated president and it was neither speeding nor evading.

Hollywood, and target shooting are a whole different animal from combat shooting.

If anything the weapon ranges in Traveller are a bit long.

Originally posted by jasper:
Finish prior service and adjust stats before picking skills.
Ignore the int skill restriction. Treat as any other stat ability.
Aging comes from 3.5 rules.
Weapon ranges are double on some weapon(I play with gun nuts/gurus)

 

[jasper]

My doubling the ranges comes from I had targets at 1500 meters which put out of range for any of rifles carried by the pc. 1500 is only 400 longer than the m16 effective range. And most of gun nuts in my group were in the military and some did see combat. So we agreed the range change would not make much of a difference since the neg mods for each range ring would off set the increase while bringing the range into more what they knew was real.
Also having seen a nam vet knock down targets both his and the guy in the other lane on the range and getting an albi I know it possible.

 

[veltyen]

A TL5 rifle has a range increment of 72 metres.

With the feat "far shot" this adds 36 metres to the increment for a total of 108 metres. A scope (THB p205) doubles this again to a 216 metre increment. This allows an attempted shot at over 2km, and relatively easy shots at 1km. This is at TL6 for the scope and TL5 for the gun under the unmodified rules.

I would have to say that this is relatively close to what I know about effective ranges. What it misses is long range large bore rifles (Anti-Material rifles for example, or large bore target rifles) who should be looking at closer to a 4 km maximum attempted range. For the generic weapons in the THB it fits, even the LAG which I consider the closest match for the above type of weapon can land an attempted shot at close to 3km, which isn't too far off.

For taste I can understand the increase in ranges, the rules don't address such things as finned ammunition, or laser guided bullets, which we already have or will have shortly. Both of these technologies increase effective rifle range considerably. Being able to land an effective shot at double the range of your enemy gives certain advantages

 

[Straybow]

3-4km is way too far. Someone said the longest confirmed sniper shot is 2400m, by a special forces dude in Afghanistan, probably with a .50 rifle. Find it mentioned somewhere in Ship's Locker (maybe Corejob remembers).