House Rules Compendium

One of my favourite things about reading other people's D&D experiences on the internet is hearing all of their house rules.  No two D&D games are alike, and house rules are one of the ways GMs can customize their game to fit their own needs and play styles.  I myself have picked up a number of house rules from the GMs I have played under, from the tales people tell on the web, and from my own imagination.  For your convenience (and mine), I will be compiling all of my house rules right here on this page.

I hope you find it interesting, and just maybe you'll steal one or two for your own home game.  I'll keep this updated with new house rules as they spring into existence.

Improved Character Sheet v2.0

Hey everyone, I've got an even better version of this character sheet now! You can check it out here.

Or here's the download link:
d20 Despot Advanced Character Sheet v3.0


But, if you prefer version 1.0, read on.

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It's been a year since I posted my original improved character sheet, and it has become the most viewed post on my blog (hey, last week we broke 5,000 total all-time blog views!).  So it's about time I updated it.

Here's the d20 Despot Improved Character Sheet v2.0.  <= Download it there, folks!

(Edit: Also, here's the first page with D&D 3.5 Edition skills: Download Here.  Sadly, in that version, the "Special Abilities" and "Conditional Skill Modifiers" sections have been sacrificed on the altar of 3.5's humongous skill list.  Fair warning: it still has the CMB and CMD stuff on it, but if you're playing 3.5 you'd damn well better be bringing those rules in instead of grappling with the grapple rules.)

Read on for more info about it and the changes/improvements I've made.

Speaking in Tongues: Using Languages in Your Campaign

The monk halts mid-step and tilts her head.  Yes, those are voices!  She silently drops down next to the sarcophagus and presses her ear to the granite floor.  There must be some sort of chamber below!

"Everything is falling into place," a sinister voice echoes from below.  "That earthquake will have awakened the Unconquered Bull."

"The people will also take it as a sign of divine disfavour.  Their faith in the Emperor will be shaken.  We need only push, and he will fall," a deeper voice responded.  

"Yes, soon the People of the Bull will topple this decadent society and usher in a reign of blood and fire!  We must return to the capital and complete the rituals."

"Indeed.  It is best we move as far from the coast as possible; the tidal wave will come shortly."

The monk sits up, puzzled.  She pulls out her Hyksaean-Zhengi phrasebook and flips through the pages with a practiced hand.  "I wish I knew what they were saying."

Language is key to how we interact with and interpret the world.  As such, it naturally comes up a lot while roleplaying as well.  The character from a distant land.  The ancient inscription above the doorway.  The conversation overheard between hobgoblin guards.  Yet the rules for learning, speaking, and reading languages are surprisingly slim in the d20 and PFRPG systems.

This sort of thing bugs me, so I came up with a new set of rules that govern how a character learns and uses languages.  It works fine if your approach to languages is as simple as "Common, Dwarven, Elvish, Orcish, etc." but it also includes optional rules for those GMs who want to lend some realism to their campaign settings by including regional languages and language families (Try going to Latvia and see how far speaking "Common" gets you).  So if you are looking for a more comprehensive rule set for languages in your campaign, look no further.  Actually, look a little further; the rules are below.

The following gold text and its associated tables are available as Open Game Content under the OGL.  Open Game Content is (C)2014 Jonah Bomgaars.

Fixing the Weapons Table, Part 4: More Polearms (part 2)

Continuing from last time (before I was interrupted by an amor of rampaging cupids)...

I am on a quest to make polearms more appealing weapon options for adventurers, and just more realistic* in general.  Part of that involves updating and expanding the list of polearms.  Last time I covered the bardiche, bec de corbin, lucerne hammer, bill, fauchard, fauchard-fork, halberd, glaive, glaive-guisarme, guisarme, glaive-glaive-glaive-guisarme-glaive...  This time around we've got some more polearms like the partisan, the pike, the pollaxe, and maybe some that don't start with p.  Read on, dear reader.

*By realistic, I don't mean 100% historically accurate, because that is simply not possible within the d20 combat system.  I am attempting to reconcile what we know about polearms with the assumptions about them that are core to D&D.  This may sometimes mean adhering to polearm categories that are relevant to D&D but not to modern historical scholarship (I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as a glaive-guisarme).

Fixing the Weapons Table, Part 3: Polearms (part 1)

Polearms are just about the most ubiquitous and varied category of weapon to have ever existed.  Heck, spears alone have been in use around the world for hundreds of thousands of years, and are so fundamental that chimpanzees have been observed crafting and using spears for hunting.  But in the Middle Ages and continuing on into the Early-Modern period, there was a proliferation of new varieties of pole-weapons designed for all sorts of uses.  Many of them were very simple to make and to wield, allowing peasant armies to have some recourse against mounted knights.  Many of them were much more complicated and specialized, designed to bust open armour, cut harnesses, or just really mess up a dude's face.

You would be hard pressed to find an army that went to war without polearms, if only just spears; getting into the Late Medieval period most armies would have units of some other specialist polearms - usually halberds.  And yet they hardly turn up in fantasy RPGs these days, whether tabletop of video game.  Many such weapons were included in 1st and 2nd Edition AD&D, and a few of those made the jump to 3.5 and Pathfinder.  My goal here is to round out the list of available polearms and fix those already existing ones which don't seem to have been statted up quite right.

Fixing the Weapons Table, Part 2: Swords, Swords, Swords!

Quick! Think of the last D&D campaign you played where no one used a sword! I'm going to guess that, except for a few of you who have been in an all-wizard campaign or a party of greatclub enthusiasts, you all just went "huh?"  Because swords are damn-near ubiquitous in campaign worlds, just as they were in real life.  There are tons of different kinds of swords, and both D&D and Pathfinder do a fairly good job of representing them.  Fairly good, but not good enough.  That's why I'm here.

Now, I won't go into how later splatbooks tend to start raiding the thesaurus for new swords to stat up just to fill pages.

Actually, yes, I will go into that...

Fixing the Weapons Table, Part 1: Heavy Mace, Kama, and Starknife

I have a bone or two to pick with the selection of weapons available in Pathfinder (and previous editions).  As such, I've been re-working the table of weapons a bit (okay, a lot) in order to make it more balanced, more interesting, more fun, and above all more realistic.

I'll start off today with a few minor problems.

Improved Character Sheet v1.0

Hey everyone, I've got an even better version of this character sheet now! You can check it out here.

Or here's the download link:
d20 Despot Advanced Character Sheet v3.0


But, if you prefer version 1.0, read on.
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Download the PDFs here:
Advanced Character Sheet v1.0
Spellcaster and Animal Companion Sheet

Read on for more info.
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Your character sheet is one of your most important tools for gameplay.  It needs to be legible, it needs to present the information you need in a logical and accessible manner, and it needs to be resistant to stains.  I can't help with the last one, but I tried my hand at creating a better character sheet than the default pathfinder one.


Here's the first page: