If you've been reading my blog for a while you know I love house rules. I love that every table has their own rules they run by. It creates such a diverse ecosystem in DCC. No two tables seem to be the same and I think that is something really special about this game.
So this week I'm gonna offer up a few more of the house rules at my table. For those interested, here is the first part of the post: House Rules Vol 1. Keep in mind that these are general rules, I have others specifically for classes and those will definitely be in future installments of this series.
Fellowship:
This is talked about in This post. Keeping it short, at the end of each session I have the players award each other a few experience points. They have to say why they are giving these points out, even if it's as simple as "I'm glad you made it today". This is a small amount, usually each player has a number of points equal to the number of players and cannot award themselves any.
This has a whole story behind it that is told in the original post, so I'll keep this one brief. This came about as a way to get the players to really pay attention to each other's actions in the game. It gets them invested, they are looking for those moments where they can award other players.
Permanent Injuries:
Pulled from the pages of D.A.M.N. (at this time I am unable to find a link directly to the zine so here is a review), I like to use the permanent injury table presented there. When a body is rolled over successfully, a point is not deducted from an ability score but instead they roll on the table and take the permanent injury.
I love this one because a point of ability score damage isn't all that interesting to me. Yes, you lost a point and something happened... but what happened? Do you have a limp? Are you an inch shorter? Is a nerve pinched in your shoulder? This tells a bit more of a story and has the added bonus of getting my players to actively seek out means to fix these issues. They hate to find out that they won't be able to sit comfortably in the tavern anymore, or that riding a horse will cause them painful discomfort and will seek out means to correct this. So it's not just an injury table, it's a push to adventure.
Infravision:
Infravision is explicitly the ability to see heat signatures in the dark. Just like with thermal vision, details are limited but fresh footprints do leave lingering heat for a few moments.
This is not explicitly a house rule, as the book explains it but
not clearly. In the Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling section it mentions that
these races have Infravision but only says they can see in the dark out
to their given distances. Later, in the corruption section we see a clarification that this allows the sight of heat signatures. I always made this assumption because I'm a bit of an old school guy, I handled it the same way older editions of D&D did. This is more of a clarification than a real house rule but it is still on my list because it's often forgotten.
Martial Arts:
Similar to how anyone can (in theory) benefit from a patron bond but wizards and clerics get the most mileage out of it, we have martial arts. This means that anyone with access to a teacher, time, and money, can learn a new way to fight and push them to new heights. Each martial art has a base option and "spells" similar to a patron bond that you do not get right away.
This one is mostly because I just really liked it. The idea of warriors having their own sort of patron bond just really hit with me. This can have as much or as little of an influence at your table as you want it to. The school of martial arts could have needs, it could issue quests for more training, just as a patron would. It has seen a little play at my table and when it comes up it performs exactly like you would expect calling on a patron would, it's big, it's flashy, and you take great risk showing off your school's secrets so brazenly.
Helmet Law & All Shields Must be Splintered:
Exactly as presented in the pages of Crawl #2, these allow players to take a critical to the helmet or shatter their shield to eat a hit.
These are at my table because they are fun and cinematic. Every now and then a player remembers they have the option and it turns the tide. Someone shatters their shield and it always seems to change the momentum of the battle. At my table at least, it feels like the tide turns when someone makes this desperate move, everyone locks in and it becomes a battle for desperate survival that causes the players and their characters to look just a little harder at the fight and find a way out.
Battle Fury:
The first time a character misses an attack each combat they are to take a d6 and place it down in front of them with the 1 facing up. This face on the die is added to their attack and damage rolls. Each time they miss they increase the number on the die to a maximum of 6. When they hit, this die is removed from in front of them until they miss again, beginning the process over again.
This one is lifted directly from the Index Card RPG. I use it because while failure and difficulty is part of the fun of telling a story and the dice represent the uncertainty, no one likes it when you spend the whole session not getting to contribute in any way because you fail every attack, save, spell check, and check above a DC of 5. Yes, the dice tell the story and sometimes the story is that you had a lot of bad luck that session... but I personally don't enjoy sitting at a table, rolling my math rock, checking my numbers, find out I failed, and then continue to do this for 4-12 hours while everyone else gets to contribute directly to success in combat, skill checks, and spells. This from a Judge who thinks that failure can be interesting and fun, often more than success.
Sleep Rating:
Beginning at 1st level, characters roll a d10 and indicate the result on their sheet as their sleep rating. This represents how heavy of a sleeper they are. A 1 represents a character who is a heavy sleeper and a 10 is someone who sleeps so light it may cause complications. This is rolled when a noise that might disturb a character's sleep is made, rolling under your sleep rating means your character wakes up to the sound. The character is still woken normally by being actively woken up by another character or taking damage. Someone sneaking simply uses their roll as normal and sleep rating is not rolled against a sneak attempt, nor is it rolled when someone is sneaking unless they roll a 1.
This one is almost as old as my history with tabletop. It came from playing a game that didn't really have rules baked in for passively waking up from hearing something, much like DCC doesn't. I like to have a way to decide if the characters heard that unusual sound in the hallway and if it woke them up or not.
That's it for round 2 of my house rules. A lot of these come from experiencing other systems and taking little pieces I found worked for me along the way. I really think it's always a good idea to read through other systems, maybe even take a short break from your usual game and try them out. You never know what gem you'll find in a rule book you wouldn't normally pick up. As always, this isn't me telling you how to run your own games or saying that my way it better or definitive, this is just what I do at my table and wanted to share.
