When You Alter Or Ignore Rules, It Changes The Game's Challenge

All of us are familiar with the first rule of RPGs (or the 0th rule, depending on how you count)... namely that if you don't care for a particular rule that you can just change it, replace it, or even toss it out entirely at your table. It's been my experience, though, that a lot of players and Game Masters take this as carte blanche to do whatever they want, but then they're surprised when the minor change they thought they were making ends up being the flapping butterfly wing that leads to a completely unexpected monsoon in another area of the game!

So, while you are absolutely free to change, ignore, or otherwise customize your gaming experience when playing an RPG, it's a good idea to ask why a particular rule exists in the first place, and how this alteration is going to affect things going forward.

No movement penalty? Oh I'm comin' for ya!

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Change The Rules, Change The Game

I will be the first to admit, rule changes are not inherently bad. Even the professionals sometimes get things wrong, or maybe you just want to simplify something in a way that doesn't boomerang back and smack you in the head as a GM because the deeper changes to the rules never have an effect on the monsters you use, or the characters and classes your players pick. But it is important to stop and ask why certain rules exist the way they do, and to ask yourself what removing those rules does to the challenge of the game, but also to the balance you're working with.

For example, let's talk about wizards.

Say you're running a wizard in the first edition of Pathfinder, or in the 3.5 edition of Dungeons and Dragons (this example might work for other games and other editions, but I don't want to make assertions I'm not fully confident about). So, you are a prepared caster, and you need your spellbook in order to properly prepare your spells every day. That spellbook is both your advantage (since you can learn new spells from other books, and from magic scrolls), but it is also your weakness. If something happens to that item, you are in deep shit, as you can't refresh your spells until you come across a new book.

Most GMs aren't big enough dicks to deliberately target a wizard's spellbook, as that is a surefire way to upset and frustrate a player. However, even if you don't have goblins trying to snatch it away, or enemy wizards casting disintigrate on the book, there are a slew of other rules that we often ignore regarding this jarring weakness. For example, if a character winds up in the midst of an area of effect spell, like fireball, they're supposed to roll saves for particular possessions on their person... and for wizards, that often means a spellbook. There's also the question of what happens when a character's possessions are exposed to the elements, such as when they're thrown overboard into the ocean, trapped in a downpour, or just fording a river on their journey. All of these situations have rules that can affect character possessions (scrolls, black powder, alchemical items, rations, etc.), including one's spellbook.

This is the reason (not to shake my walking stick at the clouds) there were so many alternatives for wizards specifically, and for other prepared arcane casters in general. There were warded spellbooks, spellbooks made of specific materials, spells that kept your spellbook safe in a pocket dimension where it wouldn't be affected, tattooed spellbooks that would be safe as long as you didn't get your skin flayed off, and it was why some campaigns just gave you thick tomes of extra spells that you could use to copy over your existing spells, ensuring you had a copy back at the cart, the inn, your castle, etc. if something happened to your in-the-field grimoire.

A lot of us ignore these rules entirely for making separate saves for player equipment when they're exposed to particular hazards. And on the one hand, yes, that means wizards, magi, and similar characters don't have to worry about a single bad roll taking away an item they need. That also means they aren't spending their resources to ensure their books are safe from harm, and that they have back-ups in case something happens. It also means that the advantages of other casting classes like the sorcerer (who requires no spellbook, and often doesn't even require material components) are far less powerful by comparison.

I've run the numbers here... they check out.

This doesn't just apply to the one, specific example I listed. It also happens when you ignore rules that say spellcasters need one hand to hold a focus component, and one hand to make somatic gestures. This undercuts special class features and powers that let weapons, shields, etc. double as necessary components to free up a character's hands. Ignoring the requirements of a holy symbol for divine casters (something that is also subject to the above rules for environmental damage in many cases) devalues features that may give you tattooed or birthmark symbols that can't be destroyed so easily, or which may free up a character's hands for other actions. It happens when you completely ignore encumberance rules, and you have your party carrying a literal ton of magic and alchemical items into the next dungeon, and it happens when you don't bother keeping track of ammunition (special or otherwise), and you wonder why the long-ranged characters have such a major advantage.

Again, we can all run our games however we want to. It is important to remember, though, that game designers don't just make up rules to fill more pages and expand our book so it looks more impressive... rules are made to solve issues in the system. Kind of like the safety precautions you're supposed to follow at work. Yes, they might be annoying, or you might wish you could ignore them, but the powers-that-be required that rule because the boss kept putting barrels of toxic waste in the crew's sleeping quarters, or the machinery kept ripping off people's fingers... the alterations were made for a reason.

The easiest way to find out what that reason was is to ignore the rule, and see what happens as a result!

Players Change To Reflect The Rules

This isn't a white room thought experiment, either. If the rules shift, that has the potential to encourage players to use different avenues and mechanics to reach their goals. I told a story about this very thing happening in real-time in episode 34 of Discussions of Darkness, How Rule 0 Creates Ripples in Playstyles.

This warning is basically the other side of the coin. Because the examples I talked about in the previous section were all things that GMs could do to throw players a bone, and relieve the burden/pressure on certain classes or characters... however, when you institute rules to limit the effectiveness of particular options to control player behavior, players often find alternatives and workarounds in directions you might not have expected them to go.

For those who don't have time to listen to the full story in the video, it was about how Minds Eye Society limited the damage a single character could do in one strike. 5 levels of lethal damage was the universal cap, regardless of what someone's powers were, what magic items were play, etc. Whether it was a mortal security guard who got off a lucky shot, or a Promethean who threw an exploding tanker truck at someone, 5 levels of damage was the most that could be done... and since an average character has 7 levels of health, and 6 at a minimum, it became impossible to kill anyone outright with one attack. So players started investing in the ability to hire goon squads of their own, bringing teams of characters with tooled-up armories as back up and fire support. Because no one of them could deal a death blow... but if you have 10 elite troopers at your side, and you also get into the fray, well, now you've got superior firepower and a bunch of extra attacks on your side of the fight.

Change Requires The Whole Table

We usually think of rule changes as something the Game Master does, and that players have to deal with, for good or for ill. However, changing the rules of the game is something that should be done with the consensus of all players. If you want to change things up, explain why you think a rule isn't working, what you'd like to do instead, and make sure everyone has buy-in for it. Also, make sure that you make it clear that if this change doesn't work, or creates more problems than it solves, this is something you can come back to in the future and talk about more.

I've said this before, but it bears repeating. Everyone at the table needs to be playing the same game, and rule changes should be made with the consent of everyone so that each person believes this is more fun (and potentially more fair) than the system that's already in place. And while not every change is going to work, everyone should be onboard for it, and be part of the discussion for how to structure the game you're all playing.

Lastly, if you're looking for some extra reading along these lines, consider checking out my ice cover supplements 100 Tips And Tricks For Being A Better Game Master, and the sequel I wrote soon after 100 Tips And Tricks For Being A Better RPG Player.

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5 House Rules I Wouldn't Recommend

Everyone's table plays a little differently. Even if you think of yourself as a straight, by-the-book sort of dungeon master, chances are good there are a few things you've altered for when you run your game. However, in all the tables I've been to, and in all the players I've spoken with, I've heard about some house rules that just didn't work. It was like the dungeon master popped the hood on the game, nodded at the engine, and then deliberately dropped a monkey wrench straight into the gears.

Just trust me, this will make it work better. MUCH better.

The more I listened, the more I've heard stories about house rules that are fairly widespread, but which I felt the need to talk about all the same. Not because they make a game unplayable, but because they just don't add the elements they're often intended to.

As always, if you like them, you're more than welcome to keep using them. For my part, though, I would recommend against the following...

#1: Critical Fumbles

Again? Goddammit, Dave!

I figured I'd get the controversial one out of the way first. And, to be clear, this is not addressing games where critical fumbles already exist as part of the core mechanics. It's expressly for games where it's something you choose to add over and above what's already in the game, say by using the Paizo Critical Fumble Deck, or a homebrewed chart.

The idea, for those not familiar, is that when you roll a fumble (a natural 1 on a d20, or having more 1s than successes if you're playing a game with dice pools), something bad happens to your PC. Maybe they accidentally stab themselves, dealing damage and have to fight at a temporary ability penalty. Maybe they break their weapon. Maybe they fall prone. Whatever it is, through pure, random happenstance, you now find yourself at a disadvantage. In some cases, a disadvantage you might not be able to come back from (such as breaking your only weapon, or falling prone with no way to stand up lest the crowd of thugs beat you to death from all the attacks of opportunity you'd provoke).

Why I Don't Recommend It...

Aside from making it feel like players are being punished for something that is completely out of their control (which they are), it's important to consider lasting damage. If your party's fighter breaks their longsword fighting a door guard, they are now out their primary weapon, and have to face the rest of the dungeon that way. That could greatly affect their ability to use feats or class features that require that weapon for the rest of this arc if they don't have a way to replace it. Compare that to a monster breaking their weapon, and look at the difference in impact.

Your monsters are supposed to lose, and so anything that affects them only matters for one fight, more often than not. Something that can permanently affect a PC will last for the rest of the session, if not the rest of the arc. Even if it's something they can repair (cast make whole on a broken weapon, lesser restoration to undo ability damage, etc.), that still uses resources. More importantly, though, it feels like you're being punished for trying to participate in the game. Especially players who, like myself, can roll half a dozen critical fumbles in a row, which can make it feel like you'd be better off just not playing at all when you get your wrist slapped for trying.

If you want critical fumbles to feel like they matter, without being a punishment, I'd recommend checking out Want Your Games To Be More Engaging? Then Make Failing Interesting! for some advice on that subject. If you're really tied to the crit fumble mechanic, though, then just make sure none of the punishments last more than a round or two, and that they don't result in permanent problems that can be a drain on party resources.

#2: Damage Caps

Meh, worst he can do is 6 health levels. Bring it on, chump!

The nature of raw chance is that, sometimes, you deal a metric ass ton of damage. You typically see this in games with dice pools, where it's possible to keep rolling "exploding" dice as long as they come up with their maximum value (Chronicles of Darkness and Savage Worlds are the two games that come to mind). When a storyteller feels that one character has the potential to do too much damage, they often attempt to level the playing field by instituting a damage cap.

In short, it means that a character can only deal a maximum ceiling of damage, no matter what the dice say. Sometimes the ceiling will be determined based on your stats (a cap equal to your weapon's rating or your attribute score, whichever is bigger, for instance), and other times it will be a flat cap.

No matter which way you're going, though, I wouldn't recommend it.

Why I Don't Recommend It...

The goal of a damage cap is, typically, to make it impossible to one-shot-kill a character. That sounds like a noble goal, and the mechanic is perfectly functional as a mechanic. However, it drastically limits the ability to play certain concepts, and it's hard to get away from the meta-knowledge that no matter how big and burly that ogre stalking toward you is, he has to hit you at least twice to take you down. Even if you aren't a tank.

Additionally, instituting a damage cap doesn't stop the arms race to see who can be the biggest badass (since some DMs use it as a way to curb aggressive tendencies from players who want to use their ability to crush a foe's head like a grape as a negotiation tool). All it does is change up which things get boosted, and what becomes more valuable.

As an example, if you knew that your character could only inflict a maximum of X amount of damage per attack, then instead of trying to get one big hammer, you'd instead max out the number of attacks you could deliver, thus making sure your storm of swords got the job done another way. Alternatively, if you limited everyone to a single attack per turn, or made the cap for total damage in a round instead of per attack, then the new arms race would be to beef up defense and health as high as possible to merely outlast your opponents. In either case, the behavior will probably be the same as someone knowing they were ripped enough to just one-shot-kill an enemy. And that's without the option of hiring on your own goon squad to act as a private army, which is something else you may see as a strategy to deal with getting around a damage cap.

You get much better results by making players' actions matter. Sure, you can kill that guy, but will doing so mean you're now wanted for murder? What about his 17 kinsman who are going to want revenge? And so on, and so forth. When you add in the fact that a damage cap means that players are less likely to feel threatened, since they know that one lucky shot from a random NPC can't explode often enough to put them on death's door, it's just not a great solution unless you're looking to remove the feeling of danger from a scenario and draw everything out.

#3: The Initiative Shuffle

It's all right... I'll get him next round!

Initiative is one of those fundamental building blocks of combat in most games. Because even if everyone is acting at the same time as they bob and weave, firing arrows and slinging punches, you need to decide in what order people get to resolve their actions. Sometimes rolling a high initiative is the difference between getting that all-important spell or sneak attack off before the villains do something to screw with your plan. Sometimes it's just routine, and doesn't matter much in the end.

There are some storytellers out there who want to roll for initiative each round. Again, if you absolutely love this mechanic, then you do you, but I just can't see where you're coming from.

Why I Wouldn't Recommend It...

As folks who read my post Avoid Shoelacing Rolls, and Watch Your Game Improve know, I'm generally not a fan of adding even more randomness to a game when it has no real impact on how we're telling the story. And given that people's bonuses to initiative are probably not going to change significantly from one round to another, this feels like a serious drain of energy that could be better spent elsewhere.

Because sure, Ragnar might roll a 16 on the second round instead of the 2 he rolled initially, but Chorus the diviner still has a +15 bonus on his roll. So, in addition to just adding more randomness (and making one more thing for you to keep track of), it doesn't actually make that big of a deal in the long run. It also ignores mechanics that tend to be in place, such as readying actions or delaying, which will move your place in the initiative order anyway.

A lot of DMs argue that this is for realism, but game mechanics aren't meant to be realistic. They're meant to act as conflict resolution tools within the story we're all telling. Shaking the initiative up every turn does no one any favors, and draws out what is already one of the longest parts of the game.

#4: Every Missed Shot Hits A Party Member

"Will you guys chill? I haven't shot any of you in, like, five turns."

Ranged combat is a part of almost any game. Whether it's the elvish longbowman, or the cyborg sniper, someone always wants to get comfortable and provide support fire. Nothing wrong with that. Most games even take into account the fact that shooting into a frenzied melee is more difficult than just shooting at an enemy standing in an empty field, and so they give you some kind of penalty to your shot (typically something you can overcome with the right class features, merits, feats, etc.).

However, there are a lot of people out there who feel that doesn't go far enough. So they make it a rule that if you fire into melee and miss, well, then your round still finds a target. Problem is, that target is almost always an ally of yours.

Why I Wouldn't Recommend It...

There is only one game I've ever played where, "Miss the bad guy, hit a friend," was an actual, in-the-book-rule, and it was in Deadlands. In order for that rule to take effect, though, your character had to have the Major Drawback "Grim Servant O' Death" on their sheet. So, the only occurrence of this being a core rule in a game I've come across admitted that it was a huge burden, and something players should be compensated for having to deal with. Note that we're referring to regular ranged weapons, here, not grenade templates whose actual trajectory matters on a missed attack.

Partly this is because most games already have a penalty associated with shooting at targets engaged in melee, and that penalty is the challenge they're overcoming. Making them attack their party members if they fail is just adding insult to injury, and stripping your players of the ability to fight at long-range as long as someone is a melee brute.

Just like with the critical fumbles, you can argue all you want that this affects the monsters just as much, but your monsters aren't supposed to survive the fight, so it doesn't matter if one or two of them get shot in the back by mistake. Those monsters only matter for the half a dozen rounds they're a threat. The sheer amount of times a PC archer will miss is way more significant, and will have a much bigger effect on the other players, and the game.

#5: You Can't Hit Him, He's Already Been Attacked!

Ah ha! The day is mine!

Generally speaking, if you can reach an enemy in an RPG, then you can attack them. You may not succeed, but you can at least make a go of trying to bust their chops, smash them with your mace, or put a bullet between their eyes. However, there are some storytellers out there who have put forth a system that, essentially, says a target can only be attacked a certain number of times per round. After that, you either need to hold your action, or pick a different target.

All I have to say to this one is, "Huh?"

Why I Wouldn't Recommend It...

This one is a lot like damage cap rules, in that I can see what it's supposed to do, but it accomplishes that goal in the most ham-handed way possible and destroys your immersion in the process. Because the goal appears to be to draw combat out, while also providing some measure of safety to characters so they don't just get their heads smashed in right off the line.

The problem is that this rule flies in the face of logic.

Let's take a WoD game as an example, since these games tend to be where this particular house rule crops up a lot. You have three big, nasties come bubbling out of a lab, black muck and acid blood flying. The first uses its turn to close with the pack of werewolves that have broken into said lab. It attacks. Now the leader returns that attack. Then his beta, coming around to the side, gets a swipe in. Even though there's plenty of sight lines straight to the thing, and there are several more pack members in the rear guard with high-powered rifles, they now can't concentrate fire on the monster. Not because they can't see it, or because they can't shoot it, but because this rule says they have to pick a different target, even though strategically it would be smarter to blow away the one monster before picking a new one to chip away at.

This rule has all the subtlety of a big, flashing red wall in a sandbox video game that tells you you're out-of-bounds. All it does is break immersion, and limit your options for no reason other than drawing out combat (something that should definitely not be a goal of any storyteller), and providing a kind of rules-based plot armor.

For my two cents, if you can reach the bad guy, or they can reach you, then it should be game on until one of you drops or legs it. Even if that means all 25 members of the enemy SWAT team are drawing a bead on you because you stepped out of cover.

Miss Any of Your Least Favorite Rules?

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I tried to stick to the most general rulings I've heard and seen that I considered bad decisions beyond, "The DM banned X race and Y class," though I have plenty of arguments there, too. If I didn't include your favorite (or least favorite) house rule in this week's Crunch topic, then please leave it in the comments below! Other readers might have a story of their own to share.

Also, if you're looking for the opposite of this post, you might want to check out 5 of The Best House Rules (in Pathfinder). Most of them aren't really that edition-specific, though.

For more of my work, check out my Vocal and Gamers archives, and stop by the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio! Or if you'd like to read some of my books, like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, head over to My Amazon Author Page!

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