Shadows of Thassilon House Rules: Difference between revisions

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House rules and policies for the Shadows of Thassilon campaign.  More to be added as necessary and discussed.
House rules and policies for the [[Shadows of Thassilon]] campaign.  More to be added as necessary and discussed.


==Absent Player, Absent Character==
==Absent Player, Absent Character==

Revision as of 00:53, 30 April 2018

House rules and policies for the Shadows of Thassilon campaign. More to be added as necessary and discussed.

Absent Player, Absent Character

If you can't make it to a session, that's not a problem; I'll do my best to keep the Events Calendar up-to-date and make it easy for players to indicate planned attendance or absence. If you can't make it to a session, your character, as far as is possible, takes no part in the action of that session. They're doing other things – “watching the horses,” or “guarding the camp,” for example – or they're following along in the background, such that they're in the same place as the rest of the party at the session's end, ready to join in with the action at the start of the next session. Access to the skills, abilities, and resources of absent characters is limited – this is something to discuss on a case-by-case basis.

Character Choices and Change

A lot of character classes have features or abilities that grant the player some degree of choice, accompanied by the wording, “once this decision is made, it cannot be changed.” I'd like to be a bit more flexible than that; in general, I would suggest that you can change such a decision, made when you gain a level, at any point before you gain your next level. This should happen at the start or end of a session, or between sessions; I'd prefer for changes of this nature not to be made in the middle of a session. Similarly, “I thought I would use this ability, but I haven't,” and “I misread the ability when I chose it and it doesn't work the way I thought,” are good reasons to make such changes, but I'd rather people not make such changes to their characters in response to information learned about dangers ahead, nor in preparation for a specific, anticipated encounter.

Encumbrance

I'm not going to ask that keep a running total of every pound of gear that you're carrying as you loot treasure, drink potions, and otherwise adjust your load. Try to figure out what load category your weapons, armour, and significantly heavy items put you in, and don't worry too much about the rest. If it sounds like you're carrying everything but/and the kitchen sink without magical aid, I may ask you to check whether you can actually carry that much when you're running from the next dragon.

Experience Points

Rise of the Runelords uses the fast advancement track, and I'm using a homebrewed method to award experience to characters absent from a session. All PCs present at a session earn an equal share of all experience gained during that session; absent PCs earn experience as though every PC had been present at that session.

For Example: We have six players, and for PCs attend a session in which 3,600 XP are earned. Those PCs present at the session earn (3,600/4) 900 XP each; those PCs absent from the session earn (3,600/6) 600 XP each.

This is the best method I've been able to come up with to ensure PCs are adequately rewarded for the greater challenges of facing encounters with a smaller party, without either excessively penalising PCs who miss sessions through no fault of their own, or creating a situation where they stand to gain more experience through absence than attendance.

New characters entering play after the start of the campaign (for example, if a player leaves and another joins, or if a character is killed and raise dead is unavailable or undesirable) begin play with experience points as though the character had been active from the start of the campaign, but absent from every session.

Quorum

As in, “How many players do we need, for this game to happen?”

Half of the PCs, rounding up, or three PCs, whichever is greater.

I'd like to have five or six PCs for this campaign, so that up to two PCs can miss any given session and we can still have a group of three or four PCs to face the adventure's challenges. If we can't get three players for any given scheduled session, then we can call it off if sufficient notice is given, or those who can make it can peruse the Games Hub's selection of board games, but either way, Pathfinder will not be happening for two PCs.

When Mistakes Happen

That's when, and not if.

Pathfinder is a somewhat complicated system with a great many feats, spells, class features, and monster abilities, the interactions between which aren't always clear or intuitive. Part of its design is deliberately exception-based, with specific cases overriding general rules at certain crucial moments.

What this means is that mistakes will happen, on both sides of the GM's screen. Exceptions will be forgotten, interactions will be misunderstood, restrictions will be missed, and modifiers will be improperly applied. My policy when this happens, and when the mistake is only noticed later, is as follows:

GM makes a mistake, to a PC's advantage: I screwed up, and because of this, you did something you shouldn't have been able to do, or succeeded at something you should have failed up. No big deal. I'll do my best to close that loophole, play closer attention to that part of the rules, or otherwise avoid making the same mistake again.

GM makes a mistake, to a PC's disadvantage: I screwed up, and because of this, you suffered something that you shouldn't have, or failed at something you should have succeeded at. I'll do my best to avoid making the same mistake again. If the consequences you suffered due to my mistake were serious ones, I'll also see what I can to do remedy the situation. For example, if your character is killed by an attack of opportunity that (we later realise) should not have been provoked, and the party recovered your character's body, the minimally invasive solution is simply to rule that the character was simply knocked unconscious rather than killed.

PC makes a mistake, to a PC's advantage: You made a mistake, and because of that, you did something you shouldn't have been able to do, or succeeded at something you should have failed at. Again, no big deal. I'll ask that you try to avoid having the same mistake occur again. That's all.

PC makes a mistake, to a PC's disadvantage: You made a mistake, and because of that, you suffered something that you shouldn't have, or failed at something you should have succeeded at. I'll ask that you try to avoid having the same mistake occur again, and if the mistake has serious consequences, I'll see if it's possible to remedy or mitigate them.