[Mechanics] House Rules

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This is going to be a short list, because for the most part Pathfinder has made most House Rules I used to use in 3.5e obsolete.

Death and Dying
I like the reincarnate spell, I always think it is an interesting challenge for a character to have to readjust to a new race or even gender. To encourage the use of this spell characters revived by it will suffer no negative levels, permanent or temporary.

Raise Dead, Resurrection, and True Resurrection work normally, though finding a non-PC cleric who is powerful enough to cast them will be very difficult early on.

If a PC does not wish to be resurrected the player can create a new PC if desired. The new PC starts at the same level and xp total as the player's previous PC, and at nearly the same wealth total. Any consumables, potions, wands, and so on, are transferred to the party upon a PCs death. Permanent items owned by the dead PC are either buried with that PC, transferred to that PCs family(if applicable), or can be taken by their companions by paying half the market price for those items. This payment is represented in story by building a monument, paying funeral expenses, and paying off debts and grievances the dead PC had. This is to keep dead PCs items from completely skewing the character's expected wealth charts, making it easier for me to make sure the characters aren't too rich or poor.

Aging and Retirement
Character age will be a factor in this game, which could go on for a decade of in game time, and possibly longer. While it isn't likely we'll run into a permanent death age for any character, I expect most humans and half-orcs will go up an age category by the very end of the game. I'll try and remind everyone how many in game years have passed on a regular basis, but try and keep an eye out for yourselves as well.

As your characters age you may feel that it is time for them to step down, either because the penalties for aging make them feel less effective to you, you grow tired of playing the same character, you want to try out a different class, or it just hurts your sense of verisimilitude for a middle aged man to go out on adventures when he has responsibilities to his family and kingdom. Anytime you want you are free to retire a character, who will settle down into a role as an NPC somewhere in the kingdom to run a shop or inn, work in the government or as a priest, or even run a thieves guild or smuggling ring if you like. You can immediately create a new PC to replace the retired one, who retains all xp gained and has the exact value in equipment that the retired character has or the average wealth by level, whichever is lower. The retired character, barring extreme circumstances, can also be brought out of retirement at any time to go adventuring again.

Family and Relationships
In a game that goes on for years or decades it is possible your characters will bond with the NPCs and other PCs, even going so far as to get involved in relationships or have children. This is totally up to you and if you're interested in your PC developing a family either with one of the NPCs in the AP or one of your own invention simply let me know. Anyone who develops an NPC for the kingdom, either as a friend or family member to your PCs or just a shopkeeper or government worker, will get some sort of in character bonus. Maybe an Action Point, a small discount on specific items or spellcasting, or just some xp if I can't think of anything more original. This is because I want to reward anything that helps flesh out the setting and tie your characters to it.

Shields Shall be Splintered- borrowed from a 1e or OD&D houserule found on the internet
Once in a character's life, when a character would take a critical hit or other attack that would instantly kill that character, they may instead rule that their shield(or other item if the character carries no shield) took the force of the blow and shattered, leaving that character alive at -1 hp instead.

Out of Combat Healing
All healing spells out of combat heal the maximum amount of damage. This is to prevent the 5 minutes of rolling after each battle when our healers have to deal with rolling 1's and 2's for hp and everyone has to say repeatedly how much hp they've got left. In combat healing is still rolled.

Vital Strike
The Vital Strike line of feats are removed as feats, and initiated as abilities any character can use in combat when they are only able to get an attack action.

Hirelings
While the leadership feat grants followers and cohorts, some of you may not want to spend a feat but still want to have personal followers loyal to you alone for in character reasons. To allow y'all personal attendants, lieutenants, crafters, or bodyguards I'm going to allow hirelings to be paid for on a month by month basis. These can be anything from maids and a butler for your home that don't have anything but a role play impact to personal armorers, alchemists, and hired mages that can do some crafting or research for you, or even mercenary companies and chartered adventuring groups that can be used in combat or sent to explore hexes y'all want scouted out but don't want to waste the in character time to do.

Cohorts
Cohorts are built with the stat array of 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10 before racial modifiers. They are equipped with a gold value for an NPC of their level, not the PC wealth by level, but can be given or bought extra equipment using your characters' personal funds or items found while adventuring. In fact, this is the only way their equipment can be improved, Cohorts do not get extra gold each level outside of the gold you pay them or items you give to them.

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Stealth Checks, Mounted
When Mounted a character can make a Stealth check using it's own skill ranks, however the check is modified by the Large size of the horse(-4 to Stealth checks) as well as any armor check penalty imposed on the horse for barding.