House Rules
Skills
Knowledge Checks
Knowledge checks to determine vital information about an enemy will be run as follows. Knowledge planes/nature/religion (as appropriate) will be used, and a D20 will be rolled. The amount of information you receive will be based off the following table. Note that the CRs you think a monster is at and the real CR are often different. This ruling will follow the Player's Handbook standard (pg. 78). The DC is also adjusted by the relative commonality of the knowledge to your character. This rule is to prevent a lower level character being fountains of knowlege about stuff they would never have encountered yet!
| DC | Outcome |
|---|---|
| 10 +CR | Basics. Could maybe say "That's what it is". They come from here. |
| 15 +CR | Some basic information about it, demon, devil, etc. What they eat |
| 20-30 +CR | Maybe one of its weak spots (DR, SR, immunities). Who likes em, who doesn't |
| 30+ +CR | You're writing the PHD on it (but I will always leave some juicy details. No point in spoiling ALL the fun) |
Death and Raise Dead
Dying sucks. It is also a lose-lose situation to bring back the dead character because of cost and level loss issues. Therefore, most players would rather elect to start a new character.
To offset these negatives, I am instituting a new house rule. The raise dead spell still causes the character to lose a level, but it is now treated as gaining a negative level which will go away once the character successfully gains the next level. This means that a 12th level character who dies can be raised and remains a 12th level character with 1 negative level, but once they achieve the next level (13th in this case) the negative level disappears.
This makes death hurt by still having attack, spell, save, etc penalties, but you eventually shake this off and return to normal.
Identifying Magic Items
Identifying magic items can be a royal pain because of the cost and because of the delay between receiving the treasure and accurately identifying its purpose or value.
You can now use a Spellcraft check to identify magic items. The DC is based on the caster level required to create the item you are trying to identify. Using a spellcraft check in this manner takes a full minute per item. A failed check can not be re-tried until the character has gained another level.
- Potions (based on Brew Potion, minimum caster level 3rd) are DC 25
- Scrolls (based on Scribe Scroll, minimum caster level 1st) begin at DC 20.
- Arms and armor (minimum caster level 5th) are DC 30
- Wands (minimum caster level 5th) are DC30
- Rods (minimum caster level 9th) are DC 35
- Rings and staffs (minimum caster level 12th) are DC 40.
- Minor wondrous items (minimum caster level 3rd) are DC 25
- Medium wondrous items are DC 30
- Major wondrous items are DC 40
Spells
Polymorph (et. al.)
NOTE: Effective immediately, I will be implementing a rules change. This should have a relatively minor impact on our campaign since no player uses it much, but I would like to make this announcement before that changes. The polymorph family of spells is now effectively restricted from play. Please see the Wizards errata for monster modifications for their powers, and the Mark of Heroes campaign rules update for justifications.
For any sorcerers/wizards, please replace instances of alter self, polymorph, polymorph any object, shapechange with a different spell. The Master of Many Forms (Complete Adventurer) and Master Transmogrifist (Complete Arcane) are also restricted.
Further Wizards details can be found here.