About Xhaosdaemon's House Rules

Note form the admin: The following are the responses to Xhaosdaemon's house rules from the old TME forums. What a great community. I am very curious to see how things go now that the forums will be mostly public!

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Re: Current house rules in progress.....
by madwill » Mon Jan 16, 2012 6:32 am

all very good rules. we're going to use your stealth rule for sure. C.H.U.D. said i should stop by and read these.

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Re: Current house rules in progress.....
by WillMcAusland » Wed Jan 18, 2012 7:04 am
Nice work ‘s House Rules!

Going to show these to some local gamers, too. This is the sort of great stuff that makes SOE members join the forum!

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Re: Current house rules in progress.....
by Xhaosdaemon » Wed Jan 18, 2012 5:48 pm

While I appreciate the thumbs up for my house rules, I was kinda hoping to stir up some discussion in general both about my house rules and ideas other people may have. I am curious what people like and don't like in my house rules and why. For example I myself could see a less fiddly encumbrance system that would be more forgiving and easier to track in some ways but I liked the certain level of realism in the varying levels I came up with. I know there is no way that everyone would think that my house rules are perfect as is and I am always open to feedback and discussion. I don't mind being told what doesn't work for people as long as it is a more reasoned approach than "that rule sucks".

So c'mon people, it's the new year! Let's have some spirited discussion about house rules! I am very curious to see things other people have come up with. I know I can't be the only one looking to make tweaks here and there. Part of the fun with a new system is discussing those little tweaks so let's get to it!

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Re: Current house rules in progress.....
by madwill » Thu Jan 19, 2012 5:29 am

our group has avoided encumbrance rules so far. The character sheet has enough on it already lol. But if I do use one it would be like the one from star siege. Make sure you have rules for aiming that can help counter the range penalty. slow, aimed fire should be far more accurate then quick shots. Having run over a dozen battle while game mastering i can attest that the SV/DV style of combat can turn into a real slog when both sides have low chances to hit. I’m looking into ways of speeding up combat. We are thinking on the same plane when it comes to combat and movement. i have rules that let my players declare "aggressive" or "defensive" postures. aggressive allows full SV but only armor and cover for DV. defensive allows full DV but with a penalty on their SV.

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Re: Current house rules in progress.....
by Xhaosdaemon » Thu Jan 19, 2012 5:01 pm

Ahhhh! Thanks for opening the gate for some discussion here...

One reason I came up with an encumbrance system is I noticed that a Well Equipped character often had in excess of 80 kg of weapons, armor, and miscellaneous gear and I found that a bit tough to swallow. What does Star Siege have for an encumbrance system, I am not familiar with it? I had another thought for encumbrance that would work similar to D&D 3.5 where I believe there were 4 categories; unencumbered, light encumbrance, medium encumbrance, and heavy encumbrance but I wanted a bit more granularity.

The rules for aiming already exist in the game and don't have to be used solely for called shots. The SV bonus for relic weapons already takes into account firing with iron sights without taking the extra time to aim really well. I find the range penalties to be appropriate as even taking your time it is much harder to make a long-range shot with iron sights. I did a quick calculation to illustrate that even with the penalties for long range a properly equipped and trained person has a better than average chance of making a shot: A 2nd rank PC with a +10 SV bonus from Accuracy and sniper rifle taking a shot at Very Long range (-30 to SV) would have a 73% chance of making a headshot at 2km (Base SV 01-55 -30 for Very Long Range= 01-25 +10 for Acc bonus +60 for aimed sniper shot <2 rnds>= 01-95 SV base. Subtracting 22 for a carefully aimed headshot leaves you at 01-73 SV). Even aimed WITHOUT proper optics you SHOULD have a difficult time making a long range shot using only iron sights.

So what sorts of house rules do you have with your game? I'd be interested in seeing them myself. I do appreciate your observations and commentary and invite more from you and others. Just trying to kick-start some good discussions here in the forum.

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Re: Current house rules in progress.....
by madwill » Fri Jan 20, 2012 5:35 am

my house rules are posted in the topic i think. although, currently we've reset things with the release of the excavator class. my group seems like it as an occupation. we'll play it 'straight' for a couple of sessions and then re-evaluate. any thought on limiting the weapon expert and dodge skills? as it stands they have no limit. hmmm perhaps a multiple attacker penalty.... dodge only works on the first attack each round?
oh yeah, star siege encumbrance. it uses a slot system. you have 10 slots. items are rated by what slot they take up. a pistol is slot 2 or so while armor is usually slot 10. multiples of the same fill the next higher slot. two pistols take slots 2 and 3. it's been a while since i read it. but it's along that line.

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Re: Current house rules in progress.....
by Nolinquisitor » Sat Feb 11, 2012 5:31 am

Hi there Xhaosdaemon, fantastic work on the house rules. Here are my thoughts on them.

Encumbrance Rules: Depending on your views on the application of strength in TME your rules are fine as written. In a more cinematic point of view I would even use them without hesitation. That being said, this game for me is not about super powerful heroes and even less about fully functional powers. So I prefer to downplay the Strength in TME to a more realistic benchmark. In your example (if I comprehend it correctly) an average STR 25 character would still be able to operate with 175 kg on his back, that's 385 lbs. I am known to be an average man... and with 385 lbs. on me I would not be able to walk, move or even breathe. But again, in a more cinematic/heroic game that's perfectly acceptable.

Also, eight levels of encumbrance is a bit too much granulity for my taste. You seem to have distributed the penalties with a linear progression which is good, but I think all the different movement penalties would be hard to recall quickly during a game. Ex: "Was it -30% or -45% at rank 3?" For the players that would also mean more crunch and this can be bad or not, your mileage may vary. I know my players would simply ignore this level of complexity and let me do the work. Just for that I would need a simplified version. Here I would simply do what you did for weapon range (short, medium, long, etc.) but with encumbrance level (light, medium, heavy, etc.). But that's just me, your rule are working fine.

Stealth and Perception: Brilliant idea and even more brilliant application. Thumbs up. I will add this one to my game (and reference it to you).

Minimum and Maximum Success/Failure Chances: Those seem fair. That's good.

Force field Defense and Opponent Attack Rolls:

Revised Rank Advancement Matrix: Neat. I specially like the idea of downgrading the EF reward for loot in silver piece value to 2%. The slower progression is great too, specially with long shot campaign in mind.

Miscellaneous Combat and Movement Rules: All of those have something interesting. I might steal some ideas (again) for my game.

Thanks for sharing and keep up the good work.

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Re: Current house rules in progress.....
by seige12 » Sun Feb 26, 2012 8:44 pm

Interesting House rules, like the look of them.

Used something similar to what you where talking about for after fight healing using first aid.

Erotic Arts gave you 1/2 your daily healing value back, and Medic skill gave you the full value with an bonus of 2 extra point healed per rank beyond 1 to reflect increasing medical knowledge.

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Re: Current house rules in progress.....
by Xhaosdaemon » Mon Feb 27, 2012 6:33 am

Looking back at my house rules I am not sure if I made it clear what exactly I meant by the healing bonus from Medic. I meant the actual healing bonus from the skill NOT the recipient's daily healing amount. Example: a PC is wounded and a fellow PC ministers to their wounds after battle. The PC giving aid has a Medic skill of 2 therefore the wounded PC gets back 3 points of Endurance.

If it was unclear before hopefully that makes things clearer. To actual grant someone their full daily healing amount PLUS the healing bonus from Medic would be way too overbalancing.

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Re: Current house rules in progress.....
by seige12 » Wed Feb 29, 2012 12:54 am

Ahh I see what you mean. Not a lot of extra healing there, but every little bit can help. Didn't find that getting full rest end back after a fight, when a hit from a Moaner does 10 on average and recovery value for my party was about 8 or so and no one had the healing touch mutation.

How about adding the fallowing relic. Advanced Medical Kit, this 10kg bright red reinforced tool kit like box contains advanced military grade medical supplies, nano-enhanced tissue repair, powerful pain killers and spray on splints allow for the quick stabilization and recovery from battle field wounds. Treatment takes 5 minutes to apply and heals your daily Endurance rate over the course of the next 10 minutes (Including any bonus due to medical skill). This can quickly tax the bodies resources though, for every application in a day beyond the first the damage is converted to Stun damage instead. This stun damage can only be healed threw natural means. Each Kit when found will contain enough supplies for 10+1d10 applications before needing resupply.