[Information] House Rules

[Olorian]

This will be a place for house rules and discussion of rules.
In this first post I will keep a list of changes from the core books.
If anyone wants to propose a change from the core rules in 4th Edition PHB 1 and 2, feel free to do so!


House rules:

1.Initiative The way I intend to use initative checks is as follows: if you beat the bad guys initiative, you can go before them, if not, your turn is after the bad guys. This gives good initiatives an extra round before the enemies, on top of a possible surprise round. If there's a surprise round I will let you know. If there isn't, everyone who beats initiative DC can post in random order. After the general game update, in which I'll post all the enemies' actions, everyone is up, in random order again (initiative by posting order). If things are unclear (like, did the guard survive the last guy's blow?), you can post "if ... I will do X, if not, I will do Y" and make rolls for both. This will also save time and keep the tempo up. In these cases I will try extra hard to update the game.

2.Perception, looting and action types The thing with Perception is that it covers too broad of a category. Perception can be either a free, minor or move action. Describe your looking for it as a free action (meaning: your eyes/ears/nose/whatever scan(s) something from your current point of view) and I will use your passive perception. If you have to perform an action or body movement for the perceiving, consider it a minor action, and roll a check (which can unfortunately be lower than your passive perception). Exception to this rule: searching or looting bodies is a move action that uses passive perception, which will save some unnecessary dice rolling and unwanted failures. I just can't imagine the drawing of a sword (minor action) to be equal to a thorough pocket search... If you want to pat someone on his pockets to feel what's in them (even one-handedly, like Ezekiel tried with the guard), I can think of that as a minor action (a short body movement needed for active perception), but when you want to feel inside all of his pockets, inner pockets, check someone's belt pouch and such - I just think a minor action is too short for that. So if you want to pat someone's pockets to feel whether they're empty or not: minor action. If you want to seriously loot or search a body (and make sure you're not missing anything, which I deem, would be really frustrating for a treasure-seeking adventurer) it's a move action. In both cases passive perception can be used for the search/looting. In the unlikely case that you would want to search inside the body and its cavities (open it up with a knife or such), make it a nature check (standard action), since you want to rely on your anatomical knowledge

3.Critical miss on a natural 1 die roll Concerning Critical Miss I'm going to stick with the PHB, so no house rule there: A natural 1 is a miss, and that's it. You can roleplay why and how - if you want something weird to happen, go ahead. I won't penalize or give people disadvantages (unless you find it reasonable yourself - like a 1 on a balance check would probably make you fall)

4.Knocking Targets Unconscious (non-lethal damage) The only change from the PHB is that I want you to say before the attack roll (preferably, mention it in the same post in the dice thread) whether you're trying to kill it or not (in stead of that you have the ability to decide after the creature has reached 0 HP). And, I would ask that you describe how your character tries to do this. A negative bloodied value is always death, though. If you don't mention you're trying to knock it out rather than kill it, I will always assume you're trying to be lethal. That means death will occur when a creature reaches 0 HP.

5.Intimidate and action types Intimidate is a standard action in a full-on interrogation situation, where you want to get information from someone. Intimidate is minor action if you just want to cow someone or make them flee.

6.Milestones Current Rule After a milestone (that is, two encounters), all PC's gain +1 Action Point, and an extra use of a magical item Daily Power*. Problem It is not so much a problem, as an alternate that makes Action Points easier to track, and offers an extra option for players who didn't use their AP. New Rule Action points are an encounter power. If you don't use it, you gain a surge at the end of the encounter / during the short rest that follows. Daily Item Power (DIP) uses follow the regular milestone system: you gain 1 extra DIP use after every two encounters.