Our House Rulebook is a Mish-mash of fixes that other people have used and fixes from experiences so far:

gallery.rptools.net/d/56322-1/Reiklander+Campaign+House+Rules.pdf

Feedback welcome.

jh

Some interesting things, I'm not sure I see why you should be able to advance your social class by spending advances, but to each his own. The new equipment seems fairly priced and I will probably reference that. Thanks!

Thanks for the feedback.

Social class isn't just determined by money, so I figure experience/advances would be appropriate. How far to take that is another matter So far, all of my players have chosen affluent right off the bat..and that was before I even said starting Wealth determines starting social class.

The main reason why it's in there is to encourage diversity in spending advances.

jh

I'm late to this party; but why only one Elf?

The only thing I like with your rules, is the background. Don't be mad for me, but seriously, is the only thing.

1. One elf only. I don't understand this. If group want to play a band of elves? What then? You throw out this rule? If your rules need to be banned in some situations, they are not so good rules. I would like to see in this place some better race generation, because this in book is really broken, but no one sees that (higher chances to become dwarf then human).
2. Method to choose starting career. Not everyone have d30 dice, it would be better to do this with d100. And you have done the human list just to double the Commoner career chances? You just made Apprentice Wizard as common as Watchman, but Commoner just 2x more? If you want to make some careers more exclusive, and the other more common, do it right with higher differences! Like 1% to Apprentice Wizard and 10%+ for a Commoner.
3. This social modifiers suck. What if I want to play a high born, but broken guy? Social play it's not only how rich you look, but also how you speak, what are your manners. Paying additional experience for changing this class is the worst thing. Character can earn more money and become more rich. That should be roleplayed. With your proposition, I can start a high born guy, that lost his all land, people, gold etc. with attack of chaos marauders, and he at the start of game have 1 purple die. Later, he won't become rich and be still poor, but pay many advances to become affluent wealth class and have one yellow die to test? It should be roleplayed, not bought by advances. You are broken high noble - some people don't believe you (mostly common people), others believe (better born) or even want to help you. In other hand, even if you are rich, but born as commoner, you are still a commoner, who don't know what is a proper etiquette, who speak with a commoner language, don't know much about art etc.
4. Equipment - I don't need this. Only weapons and armor have unified prices over the world, other things don't. In one place there are plenty of horses, in other there are no horses at all. Such tables only confuses players ("What? 10g for this lame horse?").
5. If everybody fight with lame swords... it don't make a sense. You don't want players to get too rich? Make prices higher (hey, war is coming!), things less plentiful, but don't take away players possibility of earning more gold. If they fought with 10 guys, and have now 10 swords, let them take those swords (if they can carry them all) and sell.
6. Cards are fine, don't have the need to change them.
7. If authors wanted a chaos star to work as bane and challenge, they would do this. Chaos star is quite rare. If it happens and the action card don't have chaos star, or it is some skill check - roleplay it! In this world forces of chaos works - not only big, but also small. And they can help or quite opposite. Last example from my session: In a tavern on road, there was a monster, who killed people at night. It was someone from travelers. At second night, deadly scream waked up everyone who slept. Heroes were keeping the watch. Roadwarden stood at upper floor, near balcony. she wanted to use his observation skill for one person who just wake up. She had some suspicions about this person, and wanted to check if she act being just waked or not. The test was a failure, and two banes and one chaos star was rolled. Two banes meant, that skill use will gave some false clues. But what with chaos star? I told the player, that person she is observing is turning back, and suddenly, without knowing why, the character is making few steps back, hit the barrier and fall down. Some forces of chaos have worked, roadwarden don't know the answer for his skill, and get more suspicious. This is better way to roleplay chaos star then just to changing it to bane and challenge. Sometimes, something happen, that is not rational. Maybe it's gods work, or chaos work. Sometimes it will hurt hero more, or help him in miraculous way, like for example, when fighting a goblin, and hitting with chaos star - goblin just jumps onto the sword, like he wanted do die. Or maybe the sword bends after a hit? Chaos star should be roleplayed, not changed to something else. It's same for comet.
8. Back up characters. Why to do them? You should to try to live. If you have a backup character, you can always say - nah, I can risk, if I die, I have another quite good character to play. Besides, GM should try to not kill the heroes. There should be a threat, some really hard times, but heroes should slick near to death. Only really stupid players decisions should kill heroes.

Thanks for your feedback. I take it you're not a GM?

jh

Well, in fact, I'm a GM and also a player. I just hate limiting players' creativity, prefer roleplay situations that aren't covered in the rulebook (rather then creating home rules - only exception is when such situation happen a lot or rules suck and are against common/mathematic sense) and thinks that most important thing is fun - not realistic play, playing 100% with rules etc. Of course there is always the same problem - each of us is different person and each player gets best fun with different things

If you would ask about my house rules - there are not mechanical. There are rather table rules how to play and how to master the game - like "If you have some strong & tought bravado, toss him in hard social situation to roleplay, because he can't become overconfident about his power and have to respect other party members that are not so much combat oriented" - with such rules I wouldn't care for example about someone with 6 Strength and 6 Toughness. Player wanted to play with someone like this - ok. But he must remember, that he lost other possibilities. He can slay a troll alone, but won't help much his friends when there will be a lot of overhelming enemies or help with convincing a noble to aid with his forces to the rescue of someone important to them. As long as everyone knows that they can't survive without relaying on each other - it's ok.

That's why I don't like your home rules I don't care who players are, how strong they are, how hard is to create them situation that is a challenge. If they are all nobles, well we will try playing in a noble-oriented world, where they will fight against noble-type problems, without even thinking that there are some commoners with theirs problems. If they will be super-strong, they will fight more deadlier monsters and opponents, sometimes facing goblin squad to hack them without trouble just to give them a fell that they are greater then other fighters. If they are well prepared mechanically to all tests - let them pass most of them, but also give some harder tests (heck, there are 4 challenge dice and 6 misfortune dice for some reason!) and some challenges that are not test-oriented, but needs players to think - like some puzzles or riddles to solve.

I think your comments are very logical in your situation. I'm not a fan of stifling player creativity either, but I've always preferred to have game balance for my DMing style.

The one elf per party rule is more thematic as elves in my campaign are quite rare and I'll let the players fight it out who wants to play one. In the past 5 years of gaming in D&D, WFRP2 and WFRP3 not one player has chosen to play an elf anyways so the point is kind of moot. My players are more mad that my house rule cards for halflings don't give them more points..which makes them less powerful..which has little to do with creativity and more to do with powergaming.

I used to keep some table rules, but we're all getting old now (players in late 30's and 40's). I had a lot of them that had developed from DMing too much RPGA stuff at conventions: "dont' tell another player what to do..be ready for your turn..read the rulebook..etc." but that later evolved into more the play stuff that you use:

..develop a good backstory for the GM to work with..get a picture of your character to put on your table tent so we know what you look like besides your unpainted miniature .. be ready for your turn..buy the rulebook..have dice..if you forget your character sheet you get to play Beula the Camp Follower..etc.

Speaking of the camp follower..one of my players did forget his character sheet and had to play Bim the Light-Loafered-Sailor. He had a blast (so he says) but he hasn't forgotten his character sheet since then.

Again, thanks for the comments

jh

I'm Curious as to why you eliminated the Universal effects for banes and boons. I've found those effects to be very useful in games. We had a dwarf go mad because of these effects, He was pushing the limits of Stress and Toughness and had a couple of bad rolls in succession and gained another temporary insantiy that became permanent, exceeding his willpower and driving him Mad....those two banes will haunt that poor dwarf for the rest of his sad. mad exsistance.

Wealth Characteristic:

Gotta say, I've seen this posted a few times, saw it around the forum when you/other were developing it, and I've hated the idea from the very beginning. WFRP 3rd already has Social Tiers, they are listed in the rule book, the Gold Tier, the Silver Tier, and the Brass Tier.

Gold: High Class merchants/Nobles, Adventurers with big bank accounts will still find themselves outcasts among folks at this social circle. Here money is a fashion accessory not monetary, nobles whom cater to this crown typically won't sell to adventurers because they prefer (and find it more profittable) to maintain an exlusive client base.

Silver: Middle class, this is where the real wealth of Realm lies, and where fortunes are made and lost.

Brass: People who know how to work for thier dinner, they are the avatars of "Work Hard, Play Hard" and handful of brass can mean a full belly and a few mugs of ale to swill while singing and dancing around the fire pit at the end of a long hard workday.

Even Less: This isn't mentioned specifically in the book, but its implied and talked about briefly, people who can't even afford those few brass to get the watered down ale, or a warm meal, people who have to fight off the rats just to get that left over crust of bread from 3 days ago. Or who live in the sewers and underworlds of the Realm.

Acceptance/exclusion from these tiers in social settings should be dynamic, and very from situation to situation, Someone who is "Affluent" on your chart would always get a yellow die, because they paid for it, but a "well-to-do" individual trying to get something done among the folks of the Brass Tier will suffer just as sever restrictions as someone from the Brass Tier trying to influnce Nobles of the Gold Tier, Sure they may be more willing to take the Gold from him if he's foolish enough to part with it, but someone who exchanges pennies for life giving sustience would no more know what to do with gold than a book, both have value, to other, but don't help you servive and work again tomorrow.

How well someone is accepted in a location/social circle should be role played and stratgized, when arriving a new city, it may be very important for the party to set some kind of image, either playing up to be accepted by the high society players, or to garner support from the hard working folks who know what actually goes on at street level.

Skills should also be used, maybe a guile check or charm check should be used to set the timbre of an exchange, allow for a skill specialzation to learn "Proper etiquette" to fit in at a ball in downtown Altdorf.

All-in-all I don't particularly care how you decide the ramification of social status, but allowing the purchase of static levels of social bounuses to me seems a ludicrous and terrible idea.

First Aid, Action vs. Maneuver.

Not a big fan of this one either, there is already and action card for this, "Splints and Bandages" it allows a first aid like check as an action, and first aid already has some fairly heavy restrctions on when/how often it can be used. Typically, characters who are good at first aid, aren't the front line, in the big engagment type characters, and they will have to spend a maneuvre or two just to get into position to be able to do first aid, so leaving it as a maneuvre means that now it costs a fatigue to do. Do I think that it kind of silly that in a single turn you can do first aid AND make an attack, yes a little bit, but then again, a "Turn" isn't a specified period of time either, so whose to say? I don't see a problem with First Aid as a skill check/maneuvre, I can see why you would make that change, but I just don't see the necessity for it.

Good point on the first aid. I don't know how I missed it.

I removed the universal effects because we were always forgetting it anyways.,and if it's not on the card it's getting missed.

jh

Emirikol said:

No, it's more thematic to have either multiple elves, or none at all. Elves aren't necessarily rare (well, they're not common), but they just don't like to hang out with lesser races.

My house rule on elves would be:

No high elves. At least, no envoys, swordmasters, Ulthuan-type high elves. Any "high" elves you might encounter in The Empire are Sea Elves, a breed of high elves driven to adventure, exploration, wandering the earth, etc. They maintain Ulthuan's trade relationships with the rest of the world, and very occasionally, they might be tempted to explore that rest of a world a bit more closely. They're most likely to be merchants, sailors, marines or just wandering vagabonds.

Wood elves are okay, if you can formulate a specific reason as to why you're not staying safely in Laurelorn. Some irresponsible, immature youngsters might take to wandering and hanging out with other, less mature races. Again, they're unlikely to be envoys and wardancers. Well, wardacers are rather fickle too, I believe, so who maybe they're okay.

Dwarves are most likely imperial dwarves. Dwarves have been living in the Empire for centuries, and many are successful craftsmen or merchants. Maybe there is a new karak nearby that's not completely overrun by skaven and goblins, but that's not going to be the major source of dwarves in Reikland.

(Can't FFG get some normal forum software? I'm completely unable to post here without the forum software messing up what I tried to post. And it's impossible to fix it. I wonder how this is going to show up this time.)