Topic: Whats your favorite house rule?

[Peter R]

I don't like the idea of non-experience based levelling up. Our GM rewards the majority of the experience for 'in character' play and idea points so the better the roleplaying and the more engaged you are the more the character is rewarded.

[Zat]

In my rush to reply earlier, I almosy forgot our biggest game changer; Luck.

Every PC has a Luck stat (Temp and Pot), 15 points are re-gained at each new level.
Something bad happens where the player wants to use luck? Roll under the current Luck Temp and all is well. Successful rolls reduce the current Luck Temp by the number rolled.
We allow players to use their Luck the save characters other than their own, which leads to some interesting strategic uses.
The Luck stat is also used in cases of random determination, so characters with low Temp Luck are more often the victim of random targetting or tend to lose out on random rewards.

This has drastically increased the survivability of characters in a system where one bad roll may result in character death and 2-3 hours of a player (unhappily) re-rolling a new character.

The Luck system has become so inherent within our group that when we occasionally play other systems, without the Luck stat, the players often declare how 'stupid' the system is.

[intothatdarkness]

I don't like the idea of non-experience based levelling up. Our GM rewards the majority of the experience for 'in character' play and idea points so the better the roleplaying and the more engaged you are the more the character is rewarded.

Same here, actually. One of my "house rules" is a set different XP tables for non-combat situations.

[tbigness]

In my rush to reply earlier, I almosy forgot our biggest game changer; Luck.

Every PC has a Luck stat (Temp and Pot), 15 points are re-gained at each new level.
Something bad happens where the player wants to use luck? Roll under the current Luck Temp and all is well. Successful rolls reduce the current Luck Temp by the number rolled.
We allow players to use their Luck the save characters other than their own, which leads to some interesting strategic uses.
The Luck stat is also used in cases of random determination, so characters with low Temp Luck are more often the victim of random targetting or tend to lose out on random rewards.

This has drastically increased the survivability of characters in a system where one bad roll may result in character death and 2-3 hours of a player (unhappily) re-rolling a new character.

The Luck system has become so inherent within our group that when we occasionally play other systems, without the Luck stat, the players often declare how 'stupid' the system is.

I use this also but they don't gain back any lost luck, IMO sooner or later everyone runs out of luck.

[Cory Magel]

I don't like the idea of non-experience based levelling up. Our GM rewards the majority of the experience for 'in character' play and idea points so the better the roleplaying and the more engaged you are the more the character is rewarded.

Same here, actually. One of my "house rules" is a set different XP tables for non-combat situations.

Our group has gamed together for a long time and we are, admittedly, a fairly hack and slash group so it's not like we'd be making loads of 'roleplaying' exp.

We started doing it the 'normal' way.  We thought it was funny you'd get the same exp for taking criticals, so we lower that and bumped up the points for dealing crits.  However, we had some 'kill stealing' going to by the ranged attackers (i.e. they could change targets on a whim and take down foes on the edge that someone else had done 90% of the damage to).  It wasn't malicious in most cases (with the exception of one player to a small degree) and was more of a 'this guy is on the edge, take him out'... but, that prompted us to give group exp at the end of a particular fight, then it moved to the end of the session, and I eventually figured "Why the heck even track this?  Less paperwork, I control the pace of the campaign, and I can reward players in other ways".

[Peter R]

Fair enough, that is why it is a house rule, if it works for you.

[Cory Magel]

I think it can actually increase the pace of leveling too. We run like once a month for around 12 hours. So I'll will usually default to just telling everyone to level before or after each session.  That way, ideally, in a year we'll be hitting 12th level (give or take due to scheduling).

[yammahoper]

I don't like the idea of non-experience based levelling up. Our GM rewards the majority of the experience for 'in character' play and idea points so the better the roleplaying and the more engaged you are the more the character is rewarded.

That's right.  A great roleplay may earn you 12dp on the spot.  I expect those will go into influence and professional skills for the most part, perhaps some lore skills, even athletic or gambling skills have been used as props for a great roleplaying moment and great laughs irl.  Assigning dev as you go often inspires players to roleplay more, as a high dp award is far more likely from a roleplaying moment than combat.  At the end of the night, I'll award 4-6 dp as the base for the session, but far more is to be engaged by playing you PC as best you can.

 For those who wish, assume 1 dp equals 100 exp.  I still do that all the time to this day.  A 5000 exp Balrog is 50dp for the kill, typically divided amongst the participants.  If you want to up the power of the game, give 50dp each.  I will go the way I feel my current players want as it doesn't cost me anything.  Higher power game also opens up what I can throw at em as primary antagonist and random encounters.

[tbigness]

How do you balance this with leveling? by the time someone levels they are equal to someone 2 or 3 levels higher.

[Cory Magel]

If you're using normal DP rules for pre-RMU there is some variation in DP earnings already, so as long as you don't go crazy with handing out DP it wouldn't be bad.  Still, you could track how much DP a character has received/used and divide that by whatever set amount you want to get a level.  Since I give 80DP per level I could potentially hand out up to 20DP and still (technically) be at what a character could get in one level (albeit one with amazing stats).

[jdale]

Awarding experience (or DP if you do that directly) can be useful if you need to give your players incentives. Not every group needs that. We level on a "GM says so" basis and all the PCs at once, and it's fine for our group, not to mention much less effort. I can imagine some people would prefer to have a firmer sense of where they are, and the ability to do the things that let them level faster, but it's not necessary for everyone. You want the rules to provide more structure, and then it's easy to ignore if you don't need it.

When I awarded experience, it was on the basis of only three things. 1) Do you have goals? 2) Did you make progress towards those goals? 3) Roleplaying. Those were the things I wanted to reward. It was much less important how the characters made that progress to their goals, because they were the ones figuring out how to do it. I didn't want to give them an incentive to do so via combat vs via stealth vs via persuasion, I wanted them to make those decisions purely on the basis of what was effective and what was appropriate for their characters. It was very important for them to have goals, because I was using that to determine where to go with the story.

You can design an experience system to model learning rather than as an incentive system. RMSS and RM2 leaned more in that direction, whereas RMU is more of an incentive system. I think that modeling learning doesn't work as well for several reasons. One is that it is going to become an incentive system regardless of the designer's intent, and it may give perverse incentives (e.g. rewards for sustaining criticals, or simply for favoring combat over other solutions). Another is that realistic learning is generally slower than the pace of development you want in a game, so realism is already out the window....

[tbigness]

The experience that I give is based the same weather they fight or come up with some other way of dealing with the situation. This will be plus or minus Ideas, skill use, Criticals, and roleplaying. This will usually average out about the same as I take the XP value of the encounter as a base for overcoming the obstacle. If they don't fight and sneak or talk their way through it then they are not missing out on the XP for not fighting.

[Defendi]

I use many of Cory's rules too, like the shield one.

I just looked it up and in RMFRP at least the attack level of a spell is the caster level, not the spell level. Its only the level of the attack for poison, disease and fear.

Another I use is to allow people to split their parry between multiple foes.  Its harder, but not so much harder that should be more than split equally in my opinion.

I used to use John Curtis's xp rules, which were 4500 xp per session, then at the beginning of the NEXT session, you begged for xp, reminding everyone of the cool things you'd done. I'd give 100 - 500 xp for each action.  That led to some really cool effects getting everyone into the game, but eventually I decided it penalized shy players and rewarded charismatic ones, so I settled on 5000 xp per session, barring special circumstances. So basically they level every other level until 11th.

[Cory Magel]

I just looked it up and in RMFRP at least the attack level of a spell is the caster level, not the spell level. Its only the level of the attack for poison, disease and fear.

We did our rule for SOME reason, I obviously don't remember exactly why though.  We use RMSS, but I doubt that would have changed from RMSS to RMFRP.  I wonder if we found something in another book or certain spell that we took as more system wide (like maybe spells cast from an item?).  I guess I'll just make that one "if the situation makes it beneficial."  I'm not as familiar with spell casting as a couple of our other members, but obviously several of us missed that one.

[Merkir]

In regards to Exhaustion points, what if (this is just a concept for something I am playing with) extreme exertion/special maneuvers your Base Hits are reduced.  Similar in concept to using Power Points to cast spells. You reduce your Hits when you execute extreme physical maneuvers - running long distances, holding your breath for a long time, making an incredibly long leap over a chasm, or diving from a great height...    Basically anything that the character would normally have to catch their breath after.

It would be temporary damage that you recover from quickly with a little rest, but until then you are more vulnerable.  This would then open the door to Power Strikes that do increased damage, but weaken you a little bit for the effort.    Just a thought....

Note - some of this is a spinoff from Cory's comments about Weapon Styles

I also like this idea. It makes sense that exhaustion could be tied into hits and as you say it's "temporary damage that you recover from quickly". So the mechanics of it might be that you maintain a list of three Hits values for each character rather than the normal two:

Max/Current/Exhaustion

Where:
Current Hits can never be larger than Max Hits, and Exhaustion Hits can never be larger than Current Hits.
Current Hits are increased via long rest and healing.
Exhaustion Hits are recovered via short rest and healing (or just normal activity or non-exhausting activity).
Most of the time, Exhaustion Hits = Current Hits

This ties in well with the current rule that you're at ever increasing % penalty as you lose hits. So if your Exhaustion Hits were at 75% of Max, you're at -10%, 50% is -20%, etc. as per current rules.

It's still extra record keeping but this might be far more palatable to GMs judging by the number who ignore the current exhaustion rules. And it's still easily ignored for those that don't want to use exhaustion.

Also it would be quite easy to implement in software. I can see something like this slotting into Rolemaster Combat Minion quite easily.

[Peter R]

The experience that I give is based the same weather they fight or come up with some other way of dealing with the situation. This will be plus or minus Ideas, skill use, Criticals, and roleplaying. This will usually average out about the same as I take the XP value of the encounter as a base for overcoming the obstacle. If they don't fight and sneak or talk their way through it then they are not missing out on the XP for not fighting.

This is the same method I use. What I didn't like about the experience system was the earning so much experience from being hit and taking criticals. I have toned that down which makes circumventing guards just as experience rich as killing them all. If there is a character that would not want to take lives as part of their philosophy then they would get more from not fighting but a warrior would get more from taking the fighting option.

[dagorhir]

For exhaustion, I simply use fatigue rule. Characters make a static maneuver, if they fail they increase their fatigue penalty. An absolute success will also reduce the penalty. Rest will reduce the penalty by 1 per minute.

I don't like reducing hits because for me hits represents shock and pain.

[tbigness]

And how much shock and pain can you take when your totally fatigued? it is very similar in mechanics, ask a boxer what hurts more being fatigued to the point of not being able to throw a punch or being hit with a left cross.

[tulgurth]

I don't know....being hit with a left cross hurts whether you're fatigued or not.  LOL

[dagorhir]

And how much shock and pain can you take when your totally fatigued? it is very similar in mechanics, ask a boxer what hurts more being fatigued to the point of not being able to throw a punch or being hit with a left cross.

Being fatigue doesn't increase the pain when you are fatigued, but being fatigued makes it harder to successfully accomplish thing. Probably even more than pain does. Also being fatigued doesn't really make it easier to knock you out, but pain does.

So I like having both, without the booking that come with exhaustion points. It's enough for the players to keep track of hits and power points.

Also, I should add that penalties for hits, power points and wounds are all added to the fatigue roll making it harder to succeed. So pain and trauma can (and often does) wear you down.