House Rules

House Rules 

These are my house rules; there are many like them, but these are mine. My house rules are my best friend...oh well you get the idea. Anything not covered here will follow the rules as written for 2nd edition AD&D.  I use www.purpleworm.org/rules as a reference.  You may find this site convenient, especially if you don't have all the books.  Note this is not all the 2e books by any stretch; this is what was included in the core rules CD. The problem with the printed books is there were many errors in them; some very large errors, such as allowing paladins and rangers to specialize in weapons in the first printing of the Complete Fighters Handbook, which was corrected in later printings.  As of the Core Rules CD, everything should have been corrected, or at least that's where I'm planting my stake.  Anything beyond this site is permissible as long as it's a published TSR source. I will even consider some of the 1st edition NPC classes that were popular in the Dragon Magazine.  In fact in the Research section of Purple Worm is a complete list of every class presented in the Dragon and White Dwarf; I have no access to the White Dwarf at this point in time so that one would be out, but there are a hundred or more classes from the Dragon if the base ones plus kits isn't special enough for you.

House Rule 1: rolling up ability scores. We'll go 4d6 re roll 1's, and keep highest 3.  Add/subtract modifiers for race. 

House Rule 2: Hit Points:   I grant two "kickers" if you will:  First, you get "0 level" hit points, those hit points you would have had as a commoner, before you were trained in a class.  That number corresponds to race: Human: 3 Elf: 4 Dwarf: 4 Gnome: 4 Halfling: 3  Half Orc: 3 Half Ogre: 5 Tiefling: 4  If you want any other race, get with me for approval and the 0 level number.

Next you get the max hit points per hit die at 1st level, plus your CON bonus.  Thus, a human fighter with an 16 CON would have 15 hit points to start.  All hit points after 1st level will be rolled as per the rules.

House Rule 3: NWP will be adjudicated according to the players option re write.  You will receive a number of slots every level to add to your NWP so you can improve them. If you want to use a weapon barred to your class, you can spend double the WP slots to do so.  Bonus languages for intelligence serves double duty; it can be used BOTH for languages AND NWP slots.  Specialization and Mastery will follow the Combat and Tactics book. 

House Rule 4: Wizards:  I allow wizards to wear leather armor and cast spells, or magical elven chain.  Any other armor is too restrictive and too much metal covering the body interferes with the magic.  Or something.  The magic system will follow the spell points system in Players Option: Spells and Magic, Chapter 6. YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO IT THIS WAY; if you want to follow the memorization chart in the PHB, be my guest.  It's about the same thing in the end, give or take.

House Rule 5: Clerics: there is no generic "cleric" class per se; every clerical character is a priest of a specific Mythos, with all rules and etc thereof.  Priests are allowed up to expertise in the chosen weapon of their deity if said deity has a named weapon.  For example, Thor has Mjolnir, so any priest of Thor may have expertise in warhammer. If there isn't a canon source for a mythos priest you want to run, we'll work it out together.  Also I am allowing the spell point system from Players Option: Spells and Magic, though you can just stick to the memorization chart in the PHB if you want.

House Rule 6:  There is absolutely, positively NO   rule number 6.

House Rule 7:  Experience Points: I will use a combination of group and individual awards per the DMG.  There will be an award for each adventure, and there will be some awards not listed in the DMG. See the Experience Tab for full details.

House Rule 8: Initiative:just to be clear, initiative is rolled on a d10 and modified by weapon speed or casting time, possible situational modifiers, or other special ability modifiers or spell buffs.  IT IS NOT modified by DEX, that's a house rule that developed from ages and ages ago, who knows when.  I used it forever w/o knowing it was wrong, lol.

House Rule 9: Class/Level Limits   I do use class and level limits, but I have my own table, adding a few classes to each race and increasing the limits.  You can still push past these limits if it comes to that, you just have to pay double EXP to get there.

         Human     Dwarf     Elf     Gnome    Half Elf     Halfling     Half Orc     Tiefling    Half Ogre  Giff

Barbarian:  U                       --                  --                   --                        --                         --                          15                         --                        12                  --
Bard:       U                  --              --              --                  U                   9                    --                   15                  --              --

Cleric:         U                       15                12                  9                       14                        12                        11                        10                       10                   9
Druid:      U                  --             15             --                   9                   9                    --                    --                  --              --

Fighter:       U                        U                 12                10                      14                       10                           U                         12                      15                  U

Monk:          U                        --                   --                  --                        --                         --                            --                         --                          --                  --

Paladin:       U                        --                   --                  --                        --                         --                            --                          --                        --                  --

Psion:          U                         8                   7                   9                        7                        10                           --                         --                          --                 --
Ranger:        U                        --                  15                 --                       16                        --                            9                         12                         --                --

 Rogue:         U                      12                 12                14                      12                         U                          15                         U                        12               15

Wizard*:       U                       --                   U                 9                       12                         --                            --                        14                          --                 --

Illusionist:    U                        --                   --                 U                       11                         --                            --                        12                          --                --