House Rules

- XP
- Fate Points
- Character Death

Variants/changes/clarifications to standard rules

- XP

Every player who makes it to a session will be eligible to receive Role-playing XP for their character. This is in addition to any XP from normal combat. If a player is absent, his character will not receive role-playing XP for that session... only combat-based XP. Role-playing XP is determined by the DM based upon, well, good role-playing by players (cheese it up... everyone will enjoy it, plus you get more XP!). Other ad-hoc XP will be awarded for character development between sessions.

- Fate Points

Some of you may remember the good ol’ days of the 2e “coup de grace” that I unscrupulously lifted from Eric’s campaign. It was a great idea. With the onset of 3e, “coup de grace” was transformed into a full-round action to take out a helpless combatant. Up to now, I haven’t incorporated a replacement, but with the advent of the particularly-deadly RTTTOEE, I’ve decided that nothing is more disappointing than having your character die from a single bad die roll. There’s nothing heroic about that.

Thus, for the successor to the 2e “coup de grace” I’ve decided to try and adopt a system employed by many 3e DM’s: the Fate Point system. Each character can accumulate Fate Points as they go up in level. PCs (not NPCs or monsters) get a Fate Point at 1st-level and every level after that is evenly divisible by four (4th, 8th, 12th, 16th level, etc). A Fate Point can be spent immediately after a single die roll (saving throw, attack, skill check, etc) to add +10 to the original die roll, even if the die roll was a 1. This will allow many failed saving throws, attacks, and skill checks to succeed, but won't allow the use of Fate Points to fire longbow arrows into the moon, or to survive jumps off of 400' high cliffs. Additionally, a Fate Point may be spent to automatically stabilize a dying character at -9 hp.

There are many fewer Fate Points available than there were “coup de graces” in 2e (and they’re less powerful, simply adding +10 instead of giving automatic success), meaning that they’re much more valuable. OTOH, the spending of the Fate Point can be decided after the die roll, as opposed to having to declare a “coup de grace” before rolling, which means that there should be fewer “wasted” Fate Points if the roll was enough to succeed.

- Character Death

In 3e in general (and RTTTOEE in particular), character death is something that’s going to be a lot more common than what we were used to in 2e. That said, it’s much easier to get a raise dead spell cast on you than in 2e: find a cleric that can cast it, have +/-950 gold pieces handy*, and go to it.

*Raise dead is a 5th level spell; thus, a cleric would need to be caster-level 9 to cast it. The PHB on p 114 gives a 5th-level spellcasting cost as “caster level x 50 gp”, so the base cost would be 450gp, plus another 500gp for the diamond material component. As an alternative to the diamond as a material component requirement, the caster may substitute an item carried by the dead character that has a market value of at least 1000 gp.

A particular church may then charge more or less, depending upon the church, the situation, or faith of the person to be raised. The big and ugly downside to this is the new level loss associated with raise dead (see the spell description in the PHB). Some players may decide to bring in a new character rather than raising the old one. This is an alternative; however, there are some restrictions I’ve decided to implement that may make you reconsider and go for the raise dead instead:

1. Unless everyone is rolling up new characters from a TPK (Total Party Kill, which I’m hoping we won’t see too much of), any new character brought into the party will be one level lower than the player’s previous character (at minimum XP for that level).

2. The new character can equip himself or herself with items whose value totaling up to the level limit suggested by the DMG (ask if you don’t know). Anything out of the PHB is fair game, as are non-magical items from the standard supplements. NO MAGICAL ITEMS can be selected by the player for their new character. These will have to be earned by the character. Masterwork items are fine, if the character can afford them. Also, when equipping the new character, no single item can be worth more than half the total value limit for the character’s level.

3. Please think of an inventive way to introduce the new character into the adventure as believably as possible. A good history accounting how the character got to his or her current level would be nice as well. The more you put into a PC, the more you get out of playing.

4. I highly suggest that every player have at least one backup character “waiting in the wings” that they maintain at one level below that of their current PC. Thus if a PC dies, the player isn’t frantically trying to roll up a new character on the spot so they can start playing again ASAP.

Trust me, this module is deadly. ;-)

Variants/changes/clarifications to standard rules

- Variant: Opposed Tumble Checks

We will be using the variant on opposed Tumble checks from Song and Silence (p. 38):

“It’s logical that it would be tougher to tumble around an experienced combatant than a weaker foe. Rather than allow a successful Tumble check to eliminate the chance for attacks of opportunity altogether, allow the defender to make a Reflex save (DC equal to the Tumble check result). If the tumbler is actually moving through the defender’s space, a +10 bonus applies to this Reflex save. A defender who makes the save may make an attack of opportunity against the tumbling character; failure means no attack of opportunity is allowed. Failed Tumble checks generate attacks of opportunity normally.”

Note, the opponent “makes a save” if his roll is greater or equal to the Tumble. So the tumbler would only avoid an AOO if:

Tumble result > Opponent’s Ref check result (+10 if occupied space)

- Friendly-occupied squares

Under the normal rules, you can move freely through the occupied square of an ally. However, two characters cannot fight effectively while occupying the same 5’ square. This seems to indicate that you cannot end a move on a square occupied by an ally. I’ve decided to rule that it is possible for a PC to end a move on a square occupied by a single ally. However, as long as the two occupy that square, they can take move actions only, and are denied their Dex bonus to AC.

- Spellcraft checks to identify spell (non-counterspell)

After readying a counterspell, the Spellcraft check to determine what spell an opponent is casting is considered a free action. If a spellcaster has readied a counterspell, the PHB doesn’t specify what kind of action performing the Spellcraft check is. I’ve decided to rule that using the Spellcraft skill to identify the type of spell another mage is casting in combat is a free action that a spellcaster can take as an opponent casts a spell (although the spellcaster making the check still can’t react to the opponent casting that spell until it is his turn).

- Ballistae

Instead of being a straight d20 roll, the user of the ballista makes a ranged touch attack (DMG 151).

- Harm

The Harm spell is unbalancing, IMHO. I’ve decided to give it a Fort save; making the save results in the target taking 5d6 damage instead of being reduced to 1d4 hp.

- Wall of force and line-of-sight spells

You cannot cast a spell requiring line-of-sight (such as Summon Creature) through a wall of force (as per Skip Williams Sage Advice).

- Haste

A hasted character can only make one 5’ adjustment per round (note the 5’ adjustment is not added as part of your total movement in a round, for the purposes of AoO… it is a substitution for a move action. You take a 5’ adjustment instead of a normal move action.). While haste grants an additional partial action, it does not overrule the 5’ adjustment rule. From p.74 of the (updated) D&D FAQ:

"A character can take only one 5-foot step each round, and then only if the character has not otherwise moved during the round. Supreme cleave lets you step between cleave attacks, but you still can step only once".

Read the massive thread “5' step, partial actions and haste “ on ENWorld’s message board for more details.

- Garotte

In addition to the normal procedures and effects associated with using this weapon (detailed in Song and Silence), a victim being strangled by a garotte is affected as if suffocated (see rules in the DMG, p 88).

- Color Spray

The order of effects in the rules as printed don’t make much sense. I’ve re-ordered them to the following, based on the HD of the opponent:

- Scry

IMHO, the scrying DC's are way too easy. To motivate those who would do some scrying into actually sinking skill points into the skill, I've decided to use the alternate Scrying rules described on Andy Collins' web site. There are two modifications. The first is to the actual DC check