In my games I have come up with a number of house rules and most of them seem to work pretty well. My favorite house rule is if a player does something awesome then comes up with a good one liner afterwards it heals the party for 1 strain! So far it hasn't been abused and is just there for fun. Also, we don't have a politico "casting" inspiring rhetoric (which imo is like Butter's heal spell in Stick of Truth). I'm curious to see what other people have done.

Mine are mostly ease-of-use things, or rules that support the campaign I'm running:

- no numbers for Obligation, Duty or Motivation, and the first two are just handled narratively (the D&D 5th system is nice, where you pick two personality traits, a bond, a flaw and an ideal).

- characters start with extra XP but can never buy out-of-career Specs

- unless you start with Force-sensitivity, you can never get it later

- Restricted ® items are narratively illegal in-game and you'll attract attention carrying them on the street. Heavy Blaster Rifle is now Restricted ®

- Brawn and Willpower advances using Dedication now add to Wounds and Strain respectively

- Lightsabers are only useable by Force-sensitives; many factions and cultures have strong taboos against using them anywyay

- no armour adds to Soak or Defence for PCs or NPCs

- I haven't done it yet, but there's always a strong temptation for me to fold Astrogation into Computer, and fold together the skills of Coordination/Athletics, Knowledge-Underworld/Streetwise, Discipline/Cool, Vigilance/Perception. I'd use a single skill but different Attributes depending on what was being done.

Nice! I haven't completely folded skills together, but I have been known to allow one skill or another to be rolled for checks, like Discipline or Cool for fear checks.

Another rule I like is that I upgrade the difficulty of modification attempts once for every failed attempt, which resets during the next session. Most of the time the threat of one red die is enough to stop people from attempting to mod an expensive attachment.

Greetings mate!

Nice houserule. By the way here's a similar post too http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/106434-house-rules/

Here are my own ones

• Discarded Hyperimpulsor class and the security one. Now hyperdrives have max jump lenght and comms too. Speed is a "Plot fact".

• Lightsaber: Breach X (Can destroy anything not based on energy. Rare exceptions).

• No existance of Cortosis because seems that there isn't any reference on canon of a non-energetic material that can resist lightsaber (Exceptions: Zillo Beast and "Magik" weapons").

• Weapon rarity of Ion weapons is now 8+ and ion weapons from starships disappear as a common element.

• Vehicle Scale Separation from Vehicles (or light armored) and Starship (or heavy armored). x5 and x10.

• Stat modifications: AT-ST → HT 8

• Force Support: Every additional user let exchange 1 generated FP/"pip" [LS ↔ DS]. Also obtain the usual cooperations rules benefits.

• Improved evasive maneuvers: Speed 5+ → 2 Upgrade difficulty, 2 Downgrade attack

• On the space, if the target computer fails, the hit difficulty is determined between, the highest one, difference of Silhouette and the Distance.

• Shields

They have a value called Shield (Value): Add (Value) Failures to the attackers roll that only is applied if the BASE damage is equal or lower that is called Shield Power.(Example: Shield 2, Shield Power 5; add 2 failures to all base damages equal or lower to 5.

Base Damage values higher that Shield Power apply the usual Setbacks.

• ALTERNATIVE: The character creation/developement is based on the NPC creation where you just pick what you need.

I will sometimes use delayed resolution for a situation. If a character wants to attempt an action, such as sending a deceitful message to a Hutt crime boss, but won't know for a while if the attempt was successful, I have the player roll the appropriate dice and make note of successes and advantage, and then roll agains them later.

-Nate

Maelora, I have ask, no soak/defence for armour? What is the point of armour then other than a few rare types that give environmental bonuses or (more commonly) attachments for useful toys. What If I had my heart set on playing a gadgeter and your rule just blew 40 xp worth of talents into uselessness, one of which is a gate-way talent to dedication as well as 4 other non-armour related talents. All your storm-troopers are now soak 3, their armour does nothing other than encumber them. What is the point of high pierce / breach weapons if armour doesn't matter etc.

Also, why no out of career specs? That seems to limit player options a heck of a lot. I would be interested to hear your reasons for that one.

I have eliminate the Accelerate/Decelerate maneuver. Fly/Drive now allows you to increase or decrease Speed by 1 prior to moving.

I also don't allow any vehicle to use Fly/Drive more than once per turn. I don't like the current rules that allow a Sil 4 vehicle with Speed 2 to easily outrun a Sil 5 vehicle with Speed 4 just because the smaller vessel can double up on Fly/Drive. If smaller vessels want to use a second pilot only maneuver, it will be for things like Evasive Maneuvers or Stay on Target (I forget the exact names). These show the greater nimbleness of small vessels, while Speed should be on the same scale regardless of craft size.

I have my whole party, regardless of Force sensitivity, have Morality from the F&D beta, and fear failures always result in Morality loss in addition to normal effects. Despair doubles it!

Our rules:

- having no trained skill upgrades the difficulty once

- we also use x5 and x10 vehicle scales

- in vehicle combat, successful gain the advantage allows the pilot to position his vehicle in the chosen fire arc of the target, forcing the target to only use weapons that are in the arc. So now it is possible to get on somebody's tail.

- cover adds purple dice to difficulty, not black

- sensors use cunning/computers not intelligence/computers

- autofire: each subsequent hit costs one advantage more

- talents: pressure points: medicine gives pierce, not added damage

Maelora, I have ask, no soak/defence for armour? What is the point of armour then other than a few rare types that give environmental bonuses or (more commonly) attachments for useful toys.

I believe M means no additional Soak or Defence can be added with Mods etc.

Here is ours (Combat related ones), for what their worth:

Wounds

• Characters (except minions) do not fall unconscious at 0 wounds, instead they may continue to act normally, but suffer a critical with any hit.

Cover

• Defence (Black Dice) granted by Cover adds to defense gained by other sources.

Initiating Combat

• If both parties are aware of each other, in combat range, and not hostile; the party initiating combat gains a blue die to initiative checks.
• If one party successfully performs an ambush (is aware of the incoming enemy, prepared and not detected prior to initiating combat) perform the following:
  • Roll an opposed Cool vs. Vigilance check.
    • Success grants a Blue to Initiative, with an additional blue per two additional successes
    • Two advantage may be spent to gain a free maneuver before combat. Unspent Advantages carry over to the Initiative check
    • Triumph may be spent for a top initiative slot, or for a free action (just action, not full round) before combat, or positively affect the battle.
    • Failure has no effect.
    • Three disadvantage may be spent to gain a black die to the initiative check
    • Despair may be spent to lose your free maneuver in the first round, or negatively affect the battle.
  • The ambushing party gains one blue die to initiative (regardless of roll outcome)

Integrated Grenades

• If a character with a readily accessible grenade and is within grenade range of the target, they may spend to advantage to activate the grenades Blast quality at their target's location. This uses up the grenade.
• Grenades may still be use as per standard rules.

Here is ours (Combat related ones), for what their worth:

Wounds

• Characters (except minions) do not fall unconscious at 0 wounds, instead they may continue to act normally, but suffer a critical with any hit.

I love this one! Will talk with my group about introducing it! Thanks!

I ran the last two sessions without allowing strain to be recovered between encounters. It made the sessions extremely tense towards the end.

I generally avoid House Rules unless absolutely necessary and I try to never HR or hand-wave anything that is already possible to do with an existing rule (even if it's inconvenient). I do also make snap judgements and bend the RAW occasionally but I try to keep it as close to the RAW as possible. At our table we only really consider adding or changing a rule if it comes up often enough to be bothersome, otherwise we stick to the RAW.

Here are the few we use and why:

All personal scale hits do a minimum of one Damage regardless of Soak. ~ This helps keep Combat dangerous even for very high Soak PCs without adding Damage or too great a burden on low Soak PCs because they generally get Damage from every hit anyway.

Any Talent or Mod that reduces the Advantage cost to activate an effect only applies to the first activation for that roll, further activations are at normal cost. ~ This helps keep effects like Auto-Fire effective but not as overpowering.

Pressure Points requires an Advantage for each level of Soak provided by Armor to be effective. For example: Laminate provides +2 Soak so a PP attack would require a Success plus 2 Advantages to Activate otherwise its counted as a normal Brawl Attack. ~ Reigns in PP a bit without nerfing it.

Unless a Player's PC communicates an action idea in-game to another PC the Player who comes up with the action and says it at the table is the one who does the action (ie. they make the roll using their PC). ~ (This is more of a Table Rule than a House Rule) This keeps the kibitzing to a minimum Players can always advise but if another Player's PC takes that advice then the conversation happened in-game. This is also more real as sometimes the best person for a particular action isn't the first to try doing it, it can also lead to some fairly humorous moments...

So far we haven't needed any others.

Edit: Forgot one...

My group dislikes Non-Class skills. All skills are treated like Class Skills. Any talent that gives you skills as class skills are just assumed owned.

It takes 2 skills in your starting specialization at level 2 before you can get a new specialization. You get any new specialization for free if you have 2 of the specialization skills at level 2. This gives the feeling of training into the spec and unlocking the special abilities. Force Specs got their own specialization skills for this purpose. It's possible to gain access to several spec trees at once. At our table, there were no limits but the GM had the right to ixnay any spec mining without RP reasons.

I created a more tactical space combat rule set that pulls inspiration from the old West End Games tactical space combat game. PM me if you wish a copy. It hasn't been playtested since we burned out of Star Wars after AoR came out.

Maelora, I have ask, no soak/defence for armour? What is the point of armour then other than a few rare types that give environmental bonuses or (more commonly) attachments for useful toys. What If I had my heart set on playing a gadgeter and your rule just blew 40 xp worth of talents into uselessness, one of which is a gate-way talent to dedication as well as 4 other non-armour related talents. All your storm-troopers are now soak 3, their armour does nothing other than encumber them. What is the point of high pierce / breach weapons if armour doesn't matter etc.

Also, why no out of career specs? That seems to limit player options a heck of a lot. I would be interested to hear your reasons for that one.

When I started running the game, I made a long laundry list of stuff I wanted to change. (This applied to background too - I basically rewrote the SW world as an RPG setting rather than a movie, throwing out things that were necessary for a good film but wrong for a role-playing game). Then actual play saw another bunch of changes because the rules weren't reflecting some of the stuff I wanted them to. We have regular chats and I take player feedback on board as to what is working and what isn't.

We don't see stormtrooper armour ever stop blaster fire, or bullets, or even fists in the movies. It's there for environmental protection, communication suites, and visual intimidation value.

There's still armour, just no soak benefit. So the Gadgeteer still gets their extra bonuses wearing it.

Characters wear 'armour' now for the same reasons we see in the movies; to protect against the elements, as a uniform, or for disguise purposes.

We read Pierce as always doing a small amount of damage regardless of Soak, so it's still useful against high Brawn targets. And we still have Soak, so Breach is still useful.

And yes, all that means they have to be wary of blaster fire, no more videogame stuff like standing around in the open, or PCs with 10+ soak who laugh off heavy weapons fire.

'No multiclassing' is pretty much standard in all my games and the players know that. I've been doing that since 3.5 D&D. No no cheesy Doctor/Marauder nonsense. In one of the previous editions (Saga?) you couldn't multiclass after 10th level, because you'd become iconic at what you were. So this is kinda like starting at 10th level. They get extra XP, but are strictly limited as to what they can do with it. "You'll be awesome from the start, like a movie hero, but you'll only be good at what defines you."

Lots of other games like One Ring have rules in place to define thematic characters - you can't be a Hobbit Wizard or whatever because that doesn't suit the game thematically. Likewise One Ring strictly limits things like magic items to your race.

Not for everyone, sure, but it reinforces the themes of the campaign and forces my players to be creative. Makes Recruit a lot more useful too!

Some good ones here, I will certainly try some of FuriousGreg's.

One more - 'Soak' only applies if the target is in combat, actively trying to dodge or resist, etc. If someone has a gun to your head and pulls the trigger, you're pretty much dead. Likewise Hired Guns with 8 Soak naked out of the shower are not immune to getting their throats cut while sleeping, even by someone with 2 Brawn and a kitchen knife.

And in general, I downgrade most vehicle thresholds, to reflect what we see in the movies.

This is 'Star Wars'. Stuff will get blown up on a frequent basis.

In my games I have come up with a number of house rules and most of them seem to work pretty well. My favorite house rule is if a player does something awesome then comes up with a good one liner afterwards it heals the party for 1 strain! So far it hasn't been abused and is just there for fun. Also, we don't have a politico "casting" inspiring rhetoric (which imo is like Butter's heal spell in Stick of Truth). I'm curious to see what other people have done.

This is a great idea! There's a scoundrel gambling addict in my group that regularly interacts with NPCS in ways that makes the rest of the group groan. I'll have to start issuing group strain / recovery of strain based on the situation.

the only house rule i use is fuel rods. they function like gas for a car. a ship has a number of fuel rods equale to it's consumables. take off costs 1, leaping into hyperspace costs one. in hyperspace, moving through each ring of the galaxy, such as outer rim to mid rim, costs 1. exiting from hyperspace costs one. landing costs one, and finally, each day of sublight travel costs one.
the price of fuel rods depends on how avialable they are on a planet, and things such as being members in good staning in shipping guilds can lower the price.

Our group discussed a fuel-rod thing like that, but ran into a significant conflict between that idea and half of what we actually see in lore, specifically the existence of trade worlds. In your described method, the most expensive parts of Hyperspace are the run up and departure. This means point-to-point shipments will always be cheaper than using trading hubs and/or distribution centers. This runs contrary to the description of dozens of worlds, which are said to operate as distribution points or become wealthy because of their position as trading hubs for hyperspace routes.

Our head-cannon solution was to divide the "jump" fuel costs by the ship's hyperdrive rating. Basicly, the slower you go, the cheaper things become, until you reach the point where dropping in and out of hyperspace is negligible by comparison, making it worth-while to stop in at some of the planets your passing along the way.

Ok, soooooo. I have to say that I abhor almost all house rules, but to each their own. I really despise it when a GM just makes them up as we go. Example: I use Move Object on that mook. Ok, roll your force die and give me a discipline check versus him...??? Wha???

My all time favorite is: Bad GM Guy: " ok that check will be 35/Formidable with 2 challenge up grades."

"Um, ok, why? I'm just trying to hack in the 7/11 survaliance video feed"

"Yeah, well my house rule is that becuase you are really good at it, it should be more of a challenge for you."

Ok, that is really more bad GMing than anything....sorry for my rant.

Now on to the post.

One House Rule that I do do is (hehehe), is a thing I call Panache Dice.

It stems back frm the days of "numbers" in games. Back in the days where we had difficulty numbers and that sort of thing. So I would hand out Panache Points for good one liners, good role playing, and just sheer awesomeness. Players could then spend these points on thier rolls to give them a little boost. "Ok, I rolled a 23, I will spend 2 Panache to make it a 25." They typically can get about 5-10 of these per adventure.

Now that we no longer have numbers, this concept fell away.

Well I had some little dice lying around that have three green sides, two yellow, and one red. So I took my idea of Panache Points and made into Panache Dice. Still using the same concept of how to earn them. (The more I drink in the adventure, the more they get, LOL).

So now my players can spend Panache Dice on rolls they want. The caveat being that they HAVE to be in the dice pool at the time of roll, not after the fact. So if the player feels like they are making a really important check, or have a higher difficulty they can say I am going to spend 1-3 Panache Dice on the roll. (Three is max limit per roll).

The GREEN side is ONE Sucess

The YELLOW in ONE Advantage

The RED is TWO. Can be 2 success or 2 advantage or 1 and 1. (Their is no "bad" or blank sides like Boost")

I like these as this is a real time award for good role playing and innovative ideas. I also encourage my players not to do "static" combat. "Ok, what do you do soldier guy? I aim twice and shoot..." Every single effing time!!!!!

"Ok, what do you do soldier guy? I jump to the chandelier, swing over the table, kick the candles at the baddie and shoot him! Ok, I will need a average (with an upgrade to a Challenge die, don't set yourself on fire) athletics check, you spend your maneuver, and you get 2 Panache Dice, give me an easy ranged light check, with a Boost for flying candles."

So for me, it can help encourage my players to think more creatively, in and out of combat, and bring in some flair to the game that might be otherwise missing.

I use this house rule to encourage radical game play and thinking. To help people break out of the mold of "tactile miniature" combat that has been prevalent in our hobby for years now, and encourage the old '80's style one liners, and some high adventure and swashbuckling heroics. My players really seem to dig it, and I have seen a change in thier antics for the better.

It really boils down to basic psychology. I give my players positive reinforcement for behavior I deem praise worthy. This leads to us all having more fun at the table, and having some good laughs. If people don't want to do this and stick with a more "tactile miniature combat" mind set, they can, they are not punished for it, but neither is it encouraged. Nor do I want them not want them to use their Talents they have bought. I don't want someone to forego True (Deadly) Aim to try to just get a Panache Die. But not every encounter needs to be a serious life and death consequence, they can be a little wacky and fun, and they can earn some bonus dice to help in that big fight with BBEG.

So for me, this is about the only House Rule that I use, and it gives a direct bonus to the players for breaking out of a way thinking and playing that many have grown into. I feel this House Rule can directly enhance our fun factor at our table.

When a rival losea half their wounds and takes a critical from the attack, it will kill them outright (so tougher than a minion but not as tough as a nemesis )

Ok, sort of off topic...kind of, but no need to start a new thread.

This is more of a clarification question. I asked in another thread, but I made a mistake in my retelling of my story (about the number of upgrades) and no one discussed my question, just pointed out my mistake. The incorrect upgrade number was only in my post, not in the actual game...

So now.

Adversary Talent:

When attacking the NPC you upgrade the difficulty of ALL attacks against this character by the amount of ranks in the Adversary Talent.

My question: does this work for starship combat? If my BBEG is flying a TIE, do the PCs upgrade thier attacks against him? My player pointed out that they are not attacking him, but the ship, and the difficulty is based off of scale, not range like in personal combat. I countered with it says ALL attacks. I made a ruling at the table, but would like to what others feel/do about this.

Now I only threw the BBEG in his special TIE as flair, not to actually be in "combat", but what if you were facing off on a NPC TIE ace? (I have mixed emotions about this and see both sides of the "argument" here)

I would also say that the one using the Adversary Talent has to be the pilot, not a passenger or other crew member.

So would you consider this to be a house rule or actual RAI by the developers? Thanks.

(Note: I try to play as close to RAW/RAI as much as I can. I understand this is my game and I can do what I want, but I want to stick to "scripture" as much as possible. That way, when my players buy and read the books, they know what to expect, and we can avoid debates and discussions about the rules)

Adversary does apply in vehicular combat, but its unclear if the Nemesis must be the pilot of the targeted craft and even more unclear how it works with Sil 5+ targets (like a Nemesis on the bridge of a Star Destroyer).

Favorite house rule is our fix to pressure point so you can no longer one shot everything with this talent