House rules and ideas pinched from other games ideas thread

[Tigger_MK4]

Hi all.
In one of the trail of cthulhu threads , a number of people were discussibg ideas that they used from trail that they transfered over to CoC ,and vice versa. i though it must be nice to have a thread where we shared some ideas and house rules that we used.

I'll start.
1)
Core clues and non-core clues/ expanded information (pinched from toc) .

In CoC , if a player fails a skill roll to get a clue, If they are competant at that skill (40%+, or from a profession relevant to the clue) , i allow them to get a very basic understanding of the clue. If they succeed then they get the full clue, along with additional information to help with the context.

Example: A chemist finds a white substance in the party's instant coffee supply.
(fail) : Its looks like its arsenic. Enough to poison a man several times over.
(succeed) : Its looks like its arsenic, enough to poison a man several times over. Theres no way this could have been here yesterday, or every man-jack of you would be dead.

2)
Rerolls

Once per session, i allow each player to reroll one of thier dice rolls. Its quick, easy, intuitive, popular, and gives the players a little more control over their characters success and failures.... And doesnt impact the scenario very much.


I have a few more, but they'll do for a start...so, any other houserules you guys use that you like ?

[goret]

We have 2 rerolls per adventure. But each reroll used lowers the luck score by 25% for the remainder of the adventure.

[TheGreenEyedMonster]

I am a fan of the rule that I have heard on one of the audio games here.

Base Luck off of APP rather than POW. It makes POW less of the "god" stat. Most players "should" think twice about making APP the dump stat.

[Mr. Bill]

Base Luck off of APP rather than POW. It makes POW less of the "god" stat. Most players "should" think twice about making APP the dump stat.

My players (not coming from a D&D or any RPG background) are so far from power gamers that I offered them a point-buy system last week, and they said they preferred to roll for stats as it gave them a starting point for character background. It made me excessively happy.

I remember seeing someone mention a house rule (maybe in "Players Say The Funniest Things") that no matter how suddenly a death should have occurred, the character always gets "famous last words" if the player wants. No impact on mechanics, obviously, but it sounded like it would make for fun moments. Maybe there was a small SAN bonus for the player's next character if the line was good enough? I don't remember.

[Agent_Bluescale]

I will occasionally allow a Luck roll upon being dealt a death blow by terrible monsters. If they make the roll, they survive but with a somewhat terrible/gruesome injury. One character lost a foot to the invisible monsters in 'Shadows of Yog-Sothoth'.

[Insanity]

Just to make any gunfights interesting, particularly due to one player who never seems to be concern about the safety of others, when someone misses with a firearm skill, any targets within possible line of fire may be hit.

The one gent was shooting at Old Corbit when another player was directly on the other side, and missed Corbit. I had the another player roll a Luck to avoid being hit.

Waiting for the day when he attempts to shoot a cultist or such in close quarters and hits a friend in the face with a .30 rifle.

[magicwookie]

I remember seeing someone mention a house rule (maybe in "Players Say The Funniest Things") that no matter how suddenly a death should have occurred, the character always gets "famous last words" if the player wants. No impact on mechanics, obviously, but it sounded like it would make for fun moments. Maybe there was a small SAN bonus for the player's next character if the line was good enough? I don't remember.

It was me.
(People seemed to like Chandler's "Alright then. I'll kill you from the inside" as he was eaten by Cthulhu at the end of Shadows.)
I took the idea from GOLDEN HEROES where speech is a zero frame action.
I didn,t use the SAN bonus for next character but I guess you could.

[magestones]

I like the idea of allowing a number of re-roll per session with it costing -25% luck for the remainder of the adventure.

[CAThompson]

I like the clue rule, I'll just add that to my games now.

I give stars (called happy keeper points) to my players for good lines/cool things which can be traded in for re-rolls or some form of lucky break from me (one used one to have her madness cause her to flee through the Gate back to the US instead of out into Peru.

I like the idea of using luck, I kind of want to add some kind of system where differing numbers of luck points can "buy" different results.

I use similar to the pillars of stability where each player picks a few things that make them happy, family members, favorite bar, working on miniature trains etc. that they can use to regain SAN.

I also have a mechanic for raising ability scores (not POW or EDU or SIZ) short form, spend a number of months equal to your score, after that fail a score x5 roll and you get a point added. Though my games are less lethal and more long term than many.

[Gabel]

Most of our house rules are added to make the percentile die less arbitrary, especially in combat, where it can become a lot along the lines of "you shoot, enemy shoot" and so on.

What I do when I GM is this (fairly new rules, but I want to incorporate them).
Near-miss: If one shoots and JUST misses, they can roll a Luck roll to see if the shot grazes their enemy. The shot then does a small amount of damage (usually along the lines of 1D3).
Aimed shots: I see the weapon skill as aiming for center mass, but if one wants to target a person somewhere, they can do so, but their chance of hitting is smaller (about 2/3s of their usual hit chance) but results in higher damage.
Point blank: If one is straight ahead of the person, hitting is much easier, more or less only failing with malfunction.

What we also do when a player suffers from insanity (from short temporary to more or less everything else) is that the keeper takes the player out to another room, where he explains what has happened to his character and possibly how he could roleplay it.

[alburet]

What we also do when a player suffers from insanity (from short temporary to more or less everything else) is that the keeper takes the player out to another room, where he explains what has happened to his character and possibly how he could roleplay it.

MY Kepper did this to us the other week, one of the players caused a rift to form by a puzzle box and something came out. He had us role San checks. The 3 who failed he called outside the room. When they came back 10 mins later they went to their normal spots and we all looked at the Kepper questionly. He said "Okay roleplay it" 1 got up and ran out the back door, 1 sat their catatonic, the best was the one who jumped onto a chair and started screaming and miming emptying both her pistols at something. She lost her voice for the preformance but WoW, it had us engrossed. The rest of us who saved then got to know what it was and go to react to the horror.

[Brother Brian]

I don't refer to Luck as Luck, I call it Karma, and it can be spent.

10 points gets you a reroll. 20 get you an auto success on any non-sanity related roll. "Divine Intervention" (basically if they are totally screwed, some Deus ex Machina result occurs) might cost anywhere from 100-400 points (split between players).

Luck rolls are made based on current Karma not max. Spend all your luck and you're in trouble.

You earn points back by playing your charecter's nature and background, doing something clever, amusing or otherwise helping advance the story.

[Mr. Bill]

I mentioned it in another thread hereabouts recently (Kick to the head - head to the face!), and it got me thinking: could the spirit of the damage system from World of Darkness be adapted to BRP and CoC somehow? Basically, the system involves three tiers of damage - Bashing, Lethal and Aggravated. Any melee damage from limbs or blunt instruments generally constitutes Bashing damage, but one can only take so much of it before it becomes Lethal damage. Once a character takes enough Lethal damage, they're essentially bleeding out or dying of their injuries, and further damage is Aggravated. Aggravated damage takes longer to heal than Lethal, which takes longer to heal than Bashing.

What I like about all that is it does make a distinction between the kind and severity of damage dealt by melee attacks, as opposed to knives and guns. As pointed out in the thread mentioned above, under the rules as written a martial artist with a damage bonus does more average damage with a punch than many revolvers, which might (arguably) be balanced in terms of gameplay but certainly doesn't feel right.

Of course, inserting a crunchy bit like this one also seems a bit counterintuitive for a stripped-down game like Cthulhu, and it might take more reworking of the combat system than is really worth it. Still, it's interesting to think about, if one could pull it off.

[Brother Brian]

I mentioned it in another thread hereabouts recently (Kick to the head - head to the face!), and it got me thinking: could the spirit of the damage system from World of Darkness be adapted to BRP and CoC somehow? Basically, the system involves three tiers of damage - Bashing, Lethal and Aggravated. Any melee damage from limbs or blunt instruments generally constitutes Bashing damage, but one can only take so much of it before it becomes Lethal damage. Once a character takes enough Lethal damage, they're essentially bleeding out or dying of their injuries, and further damage is Aggravated. Aggravated damage takes longer to heal than Lethal, which takes longer to heal than Bashing.

What I like about all that is it does make a distinction between the kind and severity of damage dealt by melee attacks, as opposed to knives and guns. As pointed out in the thread mentioned above, under the rules as written a martial artist with a damage bonus does more average damage with a punch than many revolvers, which might (arguably) be balanced in terms of gameplay but certainly doesn't feel right.

Of course, inserting a crunchy bit like this one also seems a bit counterintuitive for a stripped-down game like Cthulhu, and it might take more reworking of the combat system than is really worth it. Still, it's interesting to think about, if one could pull it off.

It's a tough area because it's not a combat oriented system, and isn't designed for realism. I do think the general concept of non-lethal / lethal / and super-lethal (or aggrivated) damage could work based on weapon type.

[Gil_Trevizo]

I mentioned it in another thread hereabouts recently (Kick to the head - head to the face!), and it got me thinking: could the spirit of the damage system from World of Darkness be adapted to BRP and CoC somehow? Basically, the system involves three tiers of damage - Bashing, Lethal and Aggravated. Any melee damage from limbs or blunt instruments generally constitutes Bashing damage, but one can only take so much of it before it becomes Lethal damage. Once a character takes enough Lethal damage, they're essentially bleeding out or dying of their injuries, and further damage is Aggravated. Aggravated damage takes longer to heal than Lethal, which takes longer to heal than Bashing.

Put 37 circles under "Hit Points" on the character sheet, with a number over each circle from -18 to 18. Block off the circles numbered higher than the investigator's HP (i.e. if the investigator has 15 HP, block off the circles numbered 16 - 18.

If the investigator takes Bashing damage, place a slash "/" through the circle. The investigator can take Bashing damage down to 2 HP, at which point they need to start making CON x 5 rolls or go unconscious. At 0 HP they go unconscious and any further Bashing damage becomes Lethal damage. For example, an investigator gets taken down to 0 HP and then gets punched, so the highest unblackened circle(s) then gets blackened as Lethal damage.

If the investigator takes Lethal damage, blacken the circle. Regular rules for damage apply until you get to 0 HP, at which point the character is seriously wounded. Change the rules so that a character could still survive their wounds up until they reach a negative HP equal to their HP, so an investigator with 9 HP isn't definitely dead until they reach -9 HP.

Any damage taken beyond 0 HP counts as Aggravated damage. Bashing damage can be healed by First Aid or Medicine at +1D6 per wound, Lethal damage
(and Bashing damage that became Lethal) at +1D3 per wound, and Aggravated damage can be healed only at +1 per wound. Natural healing of Bashing damage is 1D3 HP per day of rest, Lethal as normal (1D3 HP per week of rest), and Aggravated is 1D3 HP per month of rest.

Note that this would make it significantly harder to kill investigators but also cultists and creatures, as now the threshold for death is no longer -2 (the point of no return in the rules, as a First Aid/Medicine roll can only heal a maximum 3 points and characters below 0 die unless healed within 1 round). You could just ignore Aggravated damage though and keep to just separating damage between Bashing and Lethal.

Personally I like the idea that investigators can accidentally kill someone when they resort to "non-lethal" hand-to-hand combat. They think they can just knock a person out, without considering that they make crack their head open on the ground or suffer a heart attack or what have you, and now they are facing a manslaughter charge and the SAN costs of accidentally murdering a human being. That seems appropriate to me in a horror game, but YMMV so I hope the above helps in some way.