House Rules

This is a description of all the House Rules in my campaign (that I can remember), written for the benefit of myself as well as my players. Since I really liked many of the concepts in RQII and RQIII, and have access to the huge quantities of good quality stuff on the Internet, I have altered (butchered?) the system to fit my needs and will continue to do so.

I only change rules when I feel they are either (a) too complex or (b) plainly make no sense, and the rare exception of (c) when the new rules are just so sexy and cute (?) that they have to be used (such as Divine Intervention and Sorcery). As they say, "If it isn't broken, don't fix it."

For a copy of my character generation rules click here.

Combat

In my campaign I ignore Knockback and parries block any and all damage no matter what their armour points as both these rules slowed my games down too much. This causes a few problems, such as what the spell Great Parry now does, and why anybody would bother getting a larger and more cumbersome shield when a smaller one will do just as well.

Special results in combat

In combat, a special causes additional effects depending upon what type of weapon it is. An impale causes double damage as per the normal rules, a special result with a slashing weapon causes maximum weapon damage, while Crushing weapons cause double normal damage bonus.

I also define an additional level of expertise, the Supercritical and Hypercritical. A supercritical is 1/100th of your skill, and a Hypercritical is 1/400th. Both of these are rounded down, so a character can only score a supercritical when they have over 100% in a skill, and a Hypercritical when they have over 400%. Since no-one has skills over 80% at the moment, this doesn't really matter.

A Supercritical inflicts critical damage (including modifiers for impale/slash/crush) through critical resistant armour with maximum damage bonus. A rare hypercritical causes double critical damage through crit resistant armour with maximum damage bonus.

Actions per Round

A character has two actions per round. With the exception of spells, if the amount of SR's necessary to do the amount of actions exceeds 10, then they cannot be done. Actions cannot be held over to next rounds. Spell casting is an exception. The selection of actions are:

• Attack: A character may attack with his weapon. He may attack twice in one round, if he so wishes, with the same weapon, even if it is one handed. There is no restriction saying that a character must have two weapons to attack twice, or that if he attacks he cannot parry on the same SR.
• Parry: A character may parry a single attack.
• Dodge: A character may dodge all attacks from one target.
• Cast a spell: Casting a spell now takes one action. A maximum of two spells may be cast a rounbd. This applies even to fetches and allied spirits.

Melee Strike Ranks (thanks to George Harris)

Since it seems odd to me that a character with DEX 9 SIZ 15 has a melee SR of 6, while someone with just one point more in both DEX and SIZ has a base SR of 4, I use these adjusted rules. Every character has a base DEX SR caculated as normal, but SIZ SR is discarded. Instead, to caculate Melee SR you use the following table:

Combined SIZ+DEX	Melee SR	Combined SIZ+DEX	Melee SR
2-4	9	25-29	4
5-9	8	30-34	3
10-14	7	35-39	2
15-19	6	40+	1
20-24	5

Attacking with Two Weapons

Since a character cannot gain any benefit from carrying two weapons to get two attacks/round, I had to introduce another incentive. Instead, a character with two weapons gains the ability to make a riposte. If the character specials his parry with one weapon he gets a free and automatic attack with the other weapon which does not count towards their total actions that round.

Stringent conditions apply, the character must have half again as much STR to carry the weapon in his off hand. They must have half again as much DEX of the weapon with the highest DEX requirement. For example, a character who is right handed carries a morning star (STR 11; DEX 7) in his right hand and a bastard sword in his left (STR 13; DEX 9). He must have a minimum STR of 13x1.5= 20 and a minimum DEX of 9x1.5=14. Unless he had strength spells he won't be able to do it....

A character who is not ambidextrous starts off with a base chance (no cultural bonuses) in the weapon in his off-hand.

A character attacking with both weapons in one round, sacrificing their attack, will do so on normal SR's for both weapons, i.e. a Ball and Chain in your left hand going on SR 5, and a Bastard Sword in your right hand also going on SR 5.

Wielding Two Handed Weapons One Handed

Truly heroic individuals can wield two handed weapons one handed. Those who have five times the minimum STR to wield the weapon two handed can wield it one handed. This rule applies generally to giants and such like. In cases like this, the character gets to attack with the one handed version of the skill. For instance, Harrek the Beserk wishes to attack using a two handed greatsword one handed, he would attack using 1H Sword Attack skill, not 2H Sword attack skill.

Additional Weapon Notes (with thanks to Cry Havoc!)

Barbed Weapons: Add .5 ENC to the weapon, except in the cases of arrows. A barbed weapon only applies in cases of impales. Most elven arrows are barbed. Removing an impaled barbed weapon causes 2 hit points if unsuccessul and full weapon damage once again (minus any bladesharps, boost damages and damage bonuses).
Flanged, Spiked, Pointed etc... Bludgeoning Weapons: Add .5 ENC to the weapon. The weapon can now Impale at half normal special chance. The person using such a weapon can elect whether to Crush or Impale.
Quarterstaves: A staff user can, with a special, have a free riposte attack with the weapon every time they parry or attack. If a special is caused with the riposte attack another attack is not made.
Serrated Weapons: Only bladed slashing weapons can be serrated. Reduces weapon's armour points by one quarter. Adds one damage, two on a special and three on a critical or better.

Charging

Characters who charge into combat attack normally with their Movement Rate as a bonus to damage inflicted. In the case of people riding animals replace this with the character receiving the animals damage bonus instead of his own.

Disengaging from Melee

A character can elect to retreat from a melee in his statement of intent, during the next round they may only parry/dodge but are out of melee the next round. A character can choose to just flee from melee on DEX SR but get an attack they cannot parry nor dodge. Characters who are trying to avoid a foe (for instance, a character tries to run and engage an enemy shaman but a foe leaps between them and he wishes to continue onwards to the shaman) may do so, but also receive a free attack upon their person which they cannot dodge nor parry at the appropriate bonus (usually attacking from the side).

Attacks over 100%

For every full 100% a character has, their SR in an attack is reduced by 1 down to a minimum of their weapon SR.

Splitting attacks and parries

A character may split their attacks and parries no matter what their skill level.

Martial Arts

Martial arts is a very limited skill to gain. However, it does come with more bonuses than given in the description in the rulebook. A character with martial arts gains the following bonuses:

• Grapple: After making a successful grapple roll on a limb (and only a limb) a martial artist can stun it if the roll was also under their martial arts skill. It is paralysed for 1d6 rounds.
• Jump/dodge: A character who makes a martial arts roll may add half their martial arts skill to dodge and/or jump.
• Get up Quickly: If a martial arts roll is made a character can get up in 1 SR when on the floor. This costs one action.
• Meditate: A character recovers double fatigue if they make a successful martial arts roll.
• Willpower: A character can ignore the effects of loss of consiousness, loss of limb, shock etc... if they make a martial arts roll. It must be made each and every round, and 1 fp is used everytime it is used.

This is a flying kick attack. The attacker must suced in both jump and kick, success inflicts 1d6+2 damage and the hit location is determined by 1d10+10. After a successful attack a DEXx5 must be made to remain standing, or a DEXx3 if either the jump or kick failed. If one roll fumbles the effect for the fumble is taken, if both are fumbled, the fumble results for both fumbled rolls are taken (ouch...).

Flails

Flails are a special case weapon. A flail cannot actually parry, but instead the weapon is twirled in a figure of eight and if the parry is made the opponent is physcially incapable of getting close enough to make an attack. Flails are exceedingly difficult to parry, all SR 3 weapons are useless and all other weapons are at a penalty of -25% to parrying. However, fumbles are gruesome in the extreme and always result in the wielder being hit, aswell as those in the nearby vicinity....

Desperate action (taken from Elric!)

In certain desperate circumstances a character may wish to make a last chance attack. This is in addition to all other actions taken this round. The character may express their wish to make this attack at any point in the round. It takes effect as the very last action that round. The character must make a DEXx3, and if successful gains an additional free attack. However, they must sacrifice all actions next round recovering.

Fatigue Points

We ignore fatigue. I hate it, so much so that the complications it causes in combat and general game play, the ticking and tallying of numbers throughout the session, drives me insane. All of the alternatives I've tried have failed and have also ended up being ignored. I only use it for Encumbrance purposes now, and so here are the altered forms of fatigue affecting spells.

The effective ENC of the character (remember those beings over SIZ 20 lessen the effects of ENC; see Deluxe RQ p.278) is tallied on the following table, and the corresponding penalty is applied to the skills of dodge, sneak and the chance to cast all spells. Three times the penalty is applied to Swim.

ENC	Skill Penalty
0-10	No penalty
11-20	-10%
21-30	-20%
31-40	-30%

And so on. Fatigue is not lost in combat or other activities, it's far too boring and complicated. For every ENC point over a characters Fatigue Points they suffer -1% to all skills.

The spell changes are:

Drain: This sorcery spell causes the target to suffer 1d6/intensity penalty to all skills and resistance rolls as their energy is sapped from them. This recovers after fifteen minutes. If sapped below CONx5 they are exhausted and collapse for fifteen minutes.
Endurance: This is only useful to those people who are using more ENC than their fatigue points and are suffering a penalty because of this. Each point reduces this penalty by five. Also, if Drain or other fatigue draining effects are used upon someone with Endurance it acts as a Countermagic against it. Therefore an Endurance 3 will prevent a Drain of Intensity 3 or less from working on them.
Invigorate: Negates all penalties from ENC and renders the target immune to all fatigue affecting spells for the duration of the spell.

Magic

Spirit Magic

I have altered a few spells slightly in my campaign. Bascially, Heal works equally well on any and all creatures, and you don't need to spend rwice the normal magic points to a heal a non-racial member. Due to confusion arising over Countermagic, it has been ruled that it reflects all magic not cast by the caster, his allied spirit, fetch or familiar.

We also have an intresting rule for spell spirits. A cult spell spirit has, like the normal rules, a POW of 1d3 for every point of spell, while a normal spell spirit has a POW of 1d6/point.

Divine Magic

Heal wound heals any single wound, not 1hp/mp. Other minor modification such as stackable thunderbolts/sunspears etc... exist. I also use various additional divine magics gathered from around the Net.

Sorcery

After a long time, and some hard work, I managed to convert my players away from the RQIII magic system and convinced them into using Sandy Petersen's system. I have made a few alterations. Firstly, the addition of Art Skills, rather than just having arts, you learn them as a normal tickable skill. The maximum amount of manipulation you can do with any Art is limited to your skill/10 i.e. someone with Intensity 67 could cast a maximum Intensity 7 spell whereas someone with Multispell 32 could only use 4 levels of multispell. A character can spend one hour in ritual summoning their power within which adds one Art level of their choice to the spell. They can summon for a maximum of Summon/10 rounds.Click Here for my comments on Sandy's Sorcery system.

Divine Intervention (Thanks to Nils Weinander for the Divine Intervention rules)

Divine Intervention works very differently in my game. All Divine Interventions cost 1d10 POW. You can only get a Divine Intervention, though, by having been given one as a gift from your god. Initiates must do special tasks for the cult, a Rune Priest has a POWx3 of gaining one if they successfully cast Worship(Deity) on the High Holy Day, and a Rune Lord priest constantly has it as they are in contact with their god.

A god is severly limited in their area of effect. A Humakti cannot raise the dead, nor would Storm Bull save a character from fighting a particularly nasty monster. Also, healing is limited. Unless your god is very powerful, or is a healing god, then they can only heal one person, not an entire group. Lastly, unlike the AD&D Wish, gods do not take the Divine Intervention on a word by word basis, trying to pervert the request, all gods follow the spirit of the request, rather than the exact wording.

As a thumbnail sketch, a character in desperate need gains two points of cult divine magic for every point of POW lost in the DI.

Allied Spirits

As in RQII, an allied spirit can become a priest and gain access to re-usable divine magic. They can do this if they have a POW of 18 or more. To gain an allied spirit, the Rune Level must walk a specific HeroPath. While not particularly dangerous or difficult, some people fail. An initiate or acolyte could feasibly walk the HeroPath if they had gained some boon to allow them to do so.

Magic Point Regeneration

For some unknown reason, as a remanent of the campaign I learnt to play RQ in, all characters recover magic points at a rate of 1/hour/24 POW or part thereof the character possesses. Therefore a character with POW 28 would recover 2 magic points per hour.

Ceremony

Ceremony works as in Sandy Petersen's Sorcery rules. For every round of preparation a character gains 10% in their skill.

Ceremony also substitutes for Cult Lore. All ceremonies are culturally specific. Ergo, a Brithini has Ceremony/Zzaburi, an Orlanthi has Ceremony/Orlanth, a Yelmalion has Ceremony/Yelmalio etc...

Magic Matrixes

A Magic Point Matrix stores 1d10 magic points for every point of POW expended.

Commanding Spirits and Binding Enchantments

Any binding enchantment only costs 1 POW to create.

To command a spirit takes one action, and takes place on SR 10 of that round. A character may do any one other action except cast magic (effectively, releasing a spirit is like casting a spell).

Excommunication

An initiate may be excommunicated by any priest. An acolyte can only be excommunicated by a priest from their temple. A Rune Lord can only be excommunicated from the temple by a priest from the temple. A Priest can only be excommunicated by a High Priest or the Priest who initiated him into the cult. A High Priest can only be excommunicated by the Priest who initiated him. Excommunication immediatley evokes the Spirit of Reprisal.

Shamans

I make use of my own hybrid shaman rules composed of Sandy Petersen's Shaman Rules combined with Simon Phipp's Spirit Plane notes.

Spirit Combat

Spirit Combat takes place on SR 5 and 10 of every round. A spiritual attack costs one action, therefore someone in spirit combat can only take one action (such as dodge) per round if they intend to beat up the spirit, and may take no actions if they engage it fully. A spirit flees when reduced to 0 MP's, a character cannot capture the spirit unless they are a shaman, or have the appropiate control/command/dominate. All damage is inflicted to the target's personal magic points. The magic points cannot be taken from any other source, including fetches and familiars.

Damage inflicted is equal to POW/20 rounded up in d3's. So a character with POW 18 inflicts 1d3 in spirit combat, while a Spirit with POW 52 inflicts 3d3.

An intriguing sorcery technique is to Tap the POW of a spirit until it leaves a host it is possessing. This is, of course, ineffective in cases of dormant possession like that of disease spirits and passion spirits.

Rune Masters

I liked the old RQII divisions of Rune Lord and Rune Priest, and combining them to get Rune Lord-Priests etc... A character can become a Rune Lord and a Rune Priest of the same cult under special circumstances. Firstly, the character must qualifiy. Secondly, they must be approved to do so by the High Priest of their cult. After which, they are ordained as Rune Masters. In certain cults, they will accept shamans and sorcerors into their flock contrary to what the rules say. For example, Jakaleel allows in shamans, while Irripi Ontor actively encourages Magi to join.

Certain people are exempt to these rules, notably UzUz and Illuminates freely join toher cults. Plus, Yelm worshippers often combine their worship with other gods, such as Polaris or Antirius. Aldryami also have a habit of combining Rune positions, such as the Elven Lords who are Rune Lords of Hurril or Aldrya as well as Shamans.

RolePlaying Bonuses

Skill Restrictions

Skill restrictions on priests, shamans and sorcerors are ignored, as according to GoG, if your character spends too much time learning weapon skills and how to sneak around rather than learning spell casting then it's their own fault.

However, as a shaman is distracted due to their spiritual awarness, they suffer a penalty to all perception skills equal to their fetches POW (max. -75%).

HeroQuest

I use my own House HeroQuest rules. Click here for a copy.

Increasing Skills

This applies to research and training. Obviously, it should be easier to learn how to climb than to learn an obscure language the character has never heard before. Therefore I've split all skills into Easy, Medium and Hard. Research and training still takes a number of hours equal to the percentage of the skill (someone with Climb 46 must research for 46 hours) but the increase is different. You gain 1d10-2% for Easy skills, 1d6-2% for Medium skills and 1d4-2% for Hard skills if Trained in them. This is a list of skills:

Easy	Medium	Hard
Boat Climb First Aid Hide Jump Ride Sleight Sneak Speak Own Swim Throw Track Following Weapon attacks/parries: Dagger, 1H Hammer, 1H Mace, Natural Weapon, Shield Parry, Bow, Sling, Thr. Javelin, Thr. Axe, Thr. Knife	Conceal Craft Dodge Drive Evaluate Fast Talk Listen Lores (most) Orate Play instrument Read/Write (known language) Scan Search Shiphandling Sing Speak Other Treat Disease Treat Poison All secondary magical Arts Ceremony Spirit Dance Following weapon attack/parries: 1H Axe, Maul, Rapier, Shortsword, Spear, 1H Sword, Tools, Bows, Crossbows, Blowgun, Dart, Lasso	Devise Enchant Intensity Martial Arts Multispell Range Read/Write (unknown language) Sense Chaos Sense Assassin Speak (obscure language) Spirit Combat Summon Ward Spirit Following Weapon attacks/parries: Shield Attack, 2H Axe, 2H Hammer, 2H Sword, Flails, Boomerang, Bolas, Whip