Asok
Member since: 2007Houserules! Lay 'em out! What do you guys do differently than the rest of us?
My group is habitually making new rules (and new rulings) for features of Saga Edition, sometimes inventing new features or bastardizing the system with features from other games. We even tried a custom point-buy Saga Edition game... it had a few kinks.
Some examples from my own group: When we make a character, we pick one talent tree from our class that we will never want, and trade it for a talent tree in another class. So a 1st level scout can sacrifice access to the fringer talent tree in favor of the spacer talent tree, for example.
You cannot attack a starship with a personal weapon (or variants, where they have extra hp or extra DR against personal weapons). This is to avoid a certain scenario that happened once where a player crit-ed a TIE fighter with a blaster rifle and destroyed it. We sensed the uneasy amount of power available in heavy rifles and special talents and decided we did not want to live in a universe where you could be shot out of the sky by a disgruntled bureaucrat with an automatic.
So what kind of homebrew have you guys got?
My main changes are first aid being used multiple times a day, and when they roll for level health, if its less than fifty percent of the max they can get, I let them reroll. Lol. These two thngs are mostly to keep them alive. Lol.
The GM knows the will of the force.
We also do that, with first aid multiple times! The only stipulation is that first aid can only be applied once 'per injury'- so if, in the middle of a fight, someone gets a blaster to the face and has that patched up, he can STILL have first aid done if a little later on he gets a grenade to the foot. It just... makes sense. :P
One of our favourite house rules is quad damange crit for lightsabers. Bwahaha. XD It came about via mutual agreement and happens infrequently enough not to break the game, but it does mean that every now and again we actually get to experience that cinematic glory of epic lightsaber... pwnage, for want of a better word!! I've only had it happen a couple of times ever, but man does it feel grand.
Also, a critical hit that breaches damage threshold... for anyone, using any weapon, against anyone else... is instant limb removal. I mean it's just not Star Wars if there aren't limbs falling off everywhere, all the time. The limb you lose is generated randomly via d6- 1 - 4 for each limb, 5 for something on the face (an eye, nose, ear, lekku...) and 6 for torso (generally translates to an organ of some sort).
@Tusserk, you need one of these: http://www.nobleknight.com/ProductDetail.asp_Q_ProductID_E_2147352842_A…
The GM knows the will of the force.
Lol, I actually have one of those. Many a cybernetic limb can trace its origin to that hit location die...
Boshuda
Hah!!! That does look like something that'd be awfully handy to have around here... I sense a present for the GM arriving at some point in the future...
We spiced up our critical miss rules: Rolling a 1 is a critical miss (regardless of whatever bonuses you have). Then we re-roll: on a 1 your weapon is destroyed and you take damage as though you attacked yourself, on a 2-4 you just take damage as though you attacked yourself, on a 5 you accidently attack one of your team mates, 6-19 nothing happens, on a 20 you managed to foul up and miss in such an extreme and complicated manner that you actually manage to cause damage to your target (you miss, but the ricochet causes a bucket of ball bearings to fall all over the floor and the guy slips and falls on his keys. ouch!)
We also do a thing called "Stupidity Damage". Any time someone does something stupid because they weren't listening when the GM described a situation, they take 1d6 damage. Any time they do something jus plain STOOPID, they loss 1d4 semi-temporary points from thier intelligence. This has only ever applied to one of our players. But it has happened EVERY time we played. One session it happen SIX times. He finished that session with a complete loss of sentients.
I like the critical fail idea. The one and then 20 makes me think of jar jar. :P
The GM knows the will of the force.
Our group does critical failure when we play D&D. If you critically fail, the GM likes to describe some potentially humiliating way your action went wrong. My barbarian once charged off the side of a steep hill because of a critical fail.
Boshuda
Yeah, we do the critical fail type thing, but only if you role a one. Mostly we go by the rules except we have unlimited ammo, and I'm pretty sure that is because we burn through ammo so quick that it would be a major pain to keep track of. But yeah, that's about it.
LOL at 'stupidity damage'! XD
We do have a rule where the GM will dock XP if we say "That's a neat trick!".
Though I've just remembered another rule we use- I honestly can't remember exactly how it works (I didn't pay a huge amount of attention when it was being nutted out, because it basically doesn't apply to good, noble, wholesome Tusserk), but it's got something to do with beating damage threshold during a surprise round- there's probably a bit more to it- allowing an 'instant kill', basically letting sniper/assassins be potentially successful at their line of work.
It certainly made Toaster, Klopan and Cora's players veeeery happy!
All my house rules are for the D6 game. Therefore only D6 players would 'get' them. :(
Drig and I have been known to dabble in D6, and I know there are some more seasoned users, like Hish. Let's hear your houserules!
Boshuda
Where to begin?
Reach
I have added 'reach' as a factor to melee combat, based on a species' arm length and the length of the weapon used. Whoever has the greater reach gets an extra pip to attack and defend per point of difference.
example: Tiny arms (jawa)=1 Standard weapon (club)= 3, So a jawa wielding a club has a reach of 4.
Long arms (wookiee)=4 Tiny weapon (knife)=1, so a wookiee wielding a knife has a reach of 5. So in this case the wookiee gets an extra +1 to attack and defend against the jawa.
Called Shots
A character can 'hit em where it hurts'. For every extra die of damage a character wants to do, they can add 10 to the difficulty.
Tough
A new skill based on Strength. Used to resist blunt trauma damage. Species with hard skin/ scales can also use it to resist edged attacks.
Dual weapons
A new skill that allows the use of 2 blasters OR 2 melee weapons. The actual dice rolled to attack is equal to the actual weapon skill, or the dual weapon skill, whichever is LOWER. (So those who want to dual wield have to improve both skills to the same degree.)
A variety of special combat moves to be used in conjunction with the brawl skill or melee skill, these can be learned individually or as part of a fighting style. (cheaper points wise to learn them as part of a fighting style)
Games:
Magna Orb, aka 'Tank' basically 3 dimensional billiards or 'pool'. The game mechanics use a character's perception (geometry) and Dexterity (gaming).
Personal shields
A certain culture in my Star Wars has developed personal shield technology, modeled after the holtzman shields of Frank Herbert's DUNE. The wearer is protected better against faster moving objects than slow moving ones.
Starship wear
My players are forced to keep track of the wear on a starship; Hull, Shield Generator, Sensors, Landing Gear, Repulsorlift, Enviroseals, upholstery, powerplant, sublight drive, nav system, hyperdrive, environment control, escape pods, stabilizers, and weapons.
Each starts with a rating of 10. As long as regular maintenance is done and paid for, no problem. If a maintenance period is missed, roll a D6 per system. A 1 scores a point of wear and reduces the rating. Wear can also result when the rule of 1 is invoked (critical failure) whenever a system might be affected. (ie landing gear when making a landing, hyperdrive when making the jump to lightspeed etc)
To go with the wear rules are rules for swapping out and repairing starship systems.
I created an extensive system for creating a Jedi character that takes into account their training at the Jedi temple year by year, with rolls made for every curriculum to see how well they do in the various areas of training. This was used to create the padawan characters for my Children of War story arc.
There's more but frankly the thought of re-typing it all out is daunting. :)
OMG, Dred - your game sounds awesome!!
Judas - words fail me man, so instead I disolve into laughter...
Each group of rules grew out of the needs of the story arc. Like when I was running the game about a couple bouncers based loosely on the movie Road House, I needed to develop some detail in the brawling and melee combat areas.
When I was running a story arc about smugglers, the starship wear came in, as the amount of wear was very important when shopping for a used ship.
When I was running the game based around a Tatooine swoop biker gang, I developed the rules for 'Magna Orb' and other games because a lot of time was spent in dusty cantinas. It was about that time that I developed a stress system; for the sole purpose of stress relief.
The reasoning was that there is no 'drive' to have fun that isn't related to the story in a role playing game. Lots of people smoke 'death sticks', get drunk, use spice, watch live bands, engage in intimate encounters... but there is no incentive for a role playing character to do any of it.
So I started giving points of 'stress' to characters whenever they had to live outdoors for extended periods, whenever they got critical fumbles on dice rolls, whenever they got into a fight, whenever things just went crappy...
If they accumulated too many, it would begin to adversely affect the characters by limiting their ability to get a critical success roll. They would burn off stress points through various stress relief methods, mostly vices that had no other direct benefit except stress relief itself. Each activity had a die value associated. Like glitterstim had a 4 die value. When a character took a hit they'd roll 4 six siders. Every '6' result would eliminate a stress point.
It worked great. I had a bad-ass biker group that cruised the deserts battling other gangs and bandits, then pull into town, visit the brothels, get drunk, get high on spice, and gamble at everything from sabacc to jubilee wheel.
Evey vice had a chance of forming an addiction. With glitterstim for example, if you rolled more '6's than your character's perception during a period then you developed a level 1 addiction. (This meant that if you didn't get a hit of glitterstim daily, you accumulated 1 point of stress. It also meant that it was less effective at reducing stress...you'd ignore the first '6' rolled when taking it.)
I loved the time that one character got 'addicted' to a particular twi'lek exotic dancer. She was a serious drain on his funds.
That is so cool!!
This makes so much sense, when you think about it...
Wow, there's some great stuff here... I love the Stupidity Damage and Stress Points!
As for me, years ago, I created a squadron-based starfighter combat game for use with WEG's D6 Star Wars rpg, which boasted original cover art by SWAG's own Pete 'Shadowdeep' Schlough!. And the cool thing is, it can be played as a standalone game, for people with no familiarity with D6! All you need to play is a hex map and some dice - everything else is included.
You can check it out here!
Hey I.J. Nice looking rules set! Of course I have my own custom squadron fighter rules, that mesh with my capital ship space battle rules (Heavily modified from MJ12's Starmada system) but if I didn't, I swear I'd use yours!
AAAaaaawesome!!!
I. J. this is fricken cool!
Hey, thank you for the appreciation, guys!
As the years go by, I still get the odd email asking about the Advanced Game, featuring capital ships, hero ships, and other things. Funny thing is, I had the whole thing written... in my mind! :P
Now, I'd have to really sit down and try to put the pieces back together. Luckily, I do still seem to have a rough draft Capital Ship record sheet, so that might help me reconstruct what I'd created so long ago.
But I have to say, my OCD tendencies would demand that I lay out the advanced rules so they look exactly like the basic ones... do they still make Adobe Pagemaker? :D