Skip to main content

My favorite house rule

image from one of my tumblrs, The Minds Project
Here is a good litmus test as to whether or not you're interested in my thoughts in gaming:

My favorite house rule, which I will shoehorn into every setting and ruleset that I possibly can, is Goblin Punch's rule for fashion counting towards armor class. Here's how I wrote it up for a Microlite20 campaign:

Style
Even squamous horrors feel the power of a well-put-together ensemble. Style will save you.
Stylish clothes are expensive. And fashion is fickle, so be prepared to buy new clothes every season.
Stylish Clothes (10 x Normal Clothes prices) = +2 AC
Exquisite Clothes (100 x Normal Clothes prices, must have a Maid or Valet to maintain clothes) =+4AC
Stylish clothes are mussed beyond hope on a critical hit, losing all their AC benefit. A tailor can fix it up in a few hours, however.
Wearing Stylish Clothes
It takes a certain sophistication to bring an ensemble together. Your Communication skill rank must equal or exceed the Armor Class benefit you receive from your clothes. Otherwise, no benefit is gained. A Maid or Valet provides +1 to your Comm for this purpose.
Stylish clothes do not take up inventory slots. Exquisite clothes take up one slot (you’re probably holding a cane or cigarette holder or mink muff or something).
 It's an eye-roller, I know. But I love it.


Labels:

Comments

  1. The Angry MonkFebruary 3, 2014 at 8:20 AM

    I think the player would have to roll play the heck out of it for the rule to sit right to me. Some barbarian or dwarf wearing fancy clothes just to claim the AC benefit would be a NOPE from me. However, if you were a mountebank or a swashbuckler, with a fine waxed mustachio and a penchant for scented handkerchiefs...sure.

    ReplyDelete
  2. DaveFebruary 3, 2014 at 9:10 AM

    No, I kinda like it! And when The Angry Monk's barbarian gets "fancied up" to gain AC, he'll likely lose the same amount of Charisma when it comes to his henchmen, for "putting on airs!"

    ReplyDelete
  3. PulpatoonerFebruary 3, 2014 at 10:45 AM

    The above was written for Microlite20, which has four skills: Physical, Subterfuge, Knowledge, and Communication. I tied the effectiveness of Stylish Clothes to Communciation in order to address exactly that concern. Groo in Armani is still going to look like a slob. I also tied regular armor to Physical, since I'm pretty sure that if I wore plate armor, I'd just be a greater danger to myself.

    In straight up D&D, I would require it to be part of the character concept, and might ask for a Charisma check in borderline cases.

    Although, I also like Dave's repercussion-based model!

    ReplyDelete
  4. AndrewFebruary 3, 2014 at 2:41 PM

    See, I think dwarves could use this with expensive moustache waxing and beard braiding and jewelry, and the finest in osquip leathers, and plumes on their hats that make them seem as tall as others.

    For monks, they could have intricate body painting, and the finest robes out of expensive material with gold rune stitching. It's about the level of expense and style, rather than everyone using a single style.

    ReplyDelete
  5. PulpatoonerFebruary 3, 2014 at 3:52 PM

    I've now posted a D&D-specific version, using the Charisma modifier:
    http://abominablefancy.blogspot.com/2014/02/style.html

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Knaves, fancypants

I've prepared a new layout document of Ben Milton's Knaves . Knaves is a great, light rules set that has an extremely elegant core mechanic while retaining total compatibility with OSR material. It's pretty much the rpg of my dreams. This document contains the complete rules, plus a bunch of useful hacks from the community, plus a few of my invention, plus some useful resources from Ben Milton's previous effort, Maze Rats . EDIT: I've updated the layout to fix errata and make a few tweaks. Further, I've made 3 variations: KNAVES TABLET LAYOUT The Tablet Layout is meant for scrolling on screens, and contains hyperlinks. KNAVES SPREAD LAYOUT The Spread Layout is set up to print on Letter-sized paper. KNAVES A4 LAYOUT The A4 Layout is set up to print on A4 paper, and is probably the most elegant of the three versions. This is presented with generous permission from Ben Milton, and should in no way be an excuse for not purchasing a copy of Knav...
14 comments
Read more

Reviewing Rules for Play-by-Post Optimization

I’ve played a lot of PbP games: all your favorite flavors of OD&D, AD&D, and their retroclones, Call of Cthulhu, Marvel Superheroes, Traveller, Dungeon World, etc. ad nauseam. In almost every instance, I forgot what ruleset we were using at some point. Which is a good thing. Once chargen is over, you spend a lot more time describing your characters actions and poring over the GM’s descriptions than you spend interacting with rules. When you do roll, it’s usually a combat to-hit roll, which you’ve probably programmed into the online dice-roller as a macro. Pretty much any game will work for PbP. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t points of possible optimization. Point 1: Resolution. Anything that can keep the action moving is a boon to PbP. A game that requires a back-and-forth exchange of information to resolve an action is going to progress very slowly. A good rule of thumb is that it’ll take 2 or 3 days to get a response from any given player. At that pace, an exch...
Post a Comment
Read more

Maze Rats by Post

In my previous post , I reviewed a bunch of my favorite rulesets for optimization for Play-by-Post. It occurred to me almost immediately that I hadn't really thought about Maze Rats enough. In fact, I'd mis-remembered and mischaracterized it. Upon reflection, one of the mechanics I took issue with is actually a big strength. Re-reading the rules, it seems like just a few very simple hacks could make it a highly-optimized PbP game. As follows: Danger Rolls are rolled by the GM. Danger rolls usually fail, so it is in the player’s interest to describe their actions plausibly and mitigate as many risks as they can, in the hopes that they don’t trigger a danger roll. 2d6 + ability bonus ≥ 10 If you have taken enough precautions to have a distinct advantage in an action, but not enough to have eliminated the distinct possibility of danger, the GM will give you a roll with advantage. 3d6 keep 2 + ability bonus ≥ 10 Because each character only has 3 ability scores (S...
1 comment
Read more