Hit Us With Your House Rules!

[Psion]

One of the Crafty, in one of these threads (maybe even this one -- I'm too lazy to check), pointed out that skill caps almost never affect actual play after that first rank had been purchased. I suspect most of us experienced the same, and so implemented the same house rule. After all, why include a check step if the check almost never reveals a "problem," especially when that "problem" just isn't a big deal in-game?

1 situation that it still comes up a lot is when using cultures skill cap as a limit for social skills; I tend to use that then (especially considering that I have a super-impress monkey in my home game.)

[spinningdice]

Caps also come up with things like using camera's and the like. I do like that as a mechanic - you can only see so much due to the quality of the image, regardless of how perceptive you may be.

[Crafty_Pat]

Caps also come up with things like using camera's and the like. I do like that as a mechanic - you can only see so much due to the quality of the image, regardless of how perceptive you may be.

Camera caps will probably be around in Mastercraft in some form. It's general caps that are gone, with the exception of the untrained cap of 15.

[spinningdice]

Good to know, hate the lenses to get scratched.

[Dr Yes]

In a game played with people who didn’t have time to learn the more detailed trade-offs in the Spycraft character generation rules I would consider using the following -


Minimum Competency (skills): Agency recruitment and training ensures a minimum level of competency.  The GC picks 8-14 skills appropriate for frequent use in the particular game setting.  All characters may make skill checks against these skills as if they had a number of ranks equal to their agent level divided by two rounded up, even if the actual number of skill ranks they posses is lower.  The default list of skills for an espionage or modern investigation game is: Athletics, Blend, Bluff, Drive, Impress, Investigation, Networking, Notice, Resolve, Search, Sense Motive and Sneak.

Minimum Competency (combat): An agent with less than two combat feats and (only) one weapon proficiency forte receives a minimum BAB equal to their level with a weapon covered by their weapon proficiency forte (instead of the usual forte bonus).

Broad Background: The character may replace his first level feat and all the bonuses from his origin specialty with three feats. One feat must be chosen from the style or chance feats. One feat must be chosen from the (basic or advanced) skill feats. The third feat must be chosen from either the covert, chase, terrain or tradecraft feats.

Clear Concept: The character may not have more than two classes (base or expert) in total.  The character must get his second class to at least level 3 before swapping back to gain any more levels in his first class.

Jack-of-all-Trades Reloaded: All skills are considered class skills for a character.  Abilities that grant a skill as "always a class skill" instead give a flat +1 insight bonus.  The list of class skills provided for each character is a set of recommendations for new players.

[Krensky]

One that's come up in my SG-1 game (damn tactical players...) is that standard NPCs get only one save against multiple effects from one source. The primary example in this game is the flash-bang. Mainly because, in the mook or minion's case, they're not going to be alive long enough to matter.

[Krensky]

Necromancy ahoy...

Something that just came to me thinking over the last few sessions:

Narrative Control
I allow my players to spend action dice to define the fuzzy parts of the world in their favor. They can spend one to four action dice to, to use a poor physics analogy, to collapse a wave state with the number of dice determining how large a change and how much it benefits them. I don't have hard an fast rules for this, but one die might let them tell me that there's a car in the parking lot that someone left unlocked and it's one of the first ones they try, or two dice might let them say that a police officer stops the guy tailing them, or four dice might let them say the guard on duty is asleep or smoking a cigarette and not paying attention to his sector. I don't let them use this to do things a character option or rule already covers, or completely redefine the world by saying, for example, that the bomb they needed to diffuse is really a dud but small, plausible stuff is fair game.

[Toccata]

Necromancy ahoy...

Something that just came to me thinking over the last few sessions:

Narrative Control
I allow my players to spend action dice to define the fuzzy parts of the world in their favor. They can spend one to four action dice to, to use a poor physics analogy, to collapse a wave state with the number of dice determining how large a change and how much it benefits them. I don't have hard an fast rules for this, but one die might let them tell me that there's a car in the parking lot that someone left unlocked and it's one of the first ones they try, or two dice might let them say that a police officer stops the guy tailing them, or four dice might let them say the guard on duty is asleep or smoking a cigarette and not paying attention to his sector. I don't let them use this to do things a character option or rule already covers, or completely redefine the world by saying, for example, that the bomb they needed to diffuse is really a dud but small, plausible stuff is fair game.

We've done stuff like that in games before. Things like during a highway chase, our soldier asked if he could spend a few action dice to have one of the trucks on the road be a logging truck loaded up to full capacity, and then he promptly blew apart the cables holding the logs in place making for a quite spectacular getaway.

[Gentry]

Along the lines of action dice, I've seen action dice house-ruled to save characters from critical failures.  Specifically, the player matched the action dice the GC spent to activate the critical, and all the action dice "bid" like that were expended. 

The idea of action dice being spent as insurance against a critical failure has a certain appeal.  Especially since it's really only going to work once, as the character is then out of dice.

[glimmerrat]

Narrative Control
I allow my players to spend action dice to define the fuzzy parts of the world in their favor. They can spend one to four action dice to, to use a poor physics analogy, to collapse a wave state with the number of dice determining how large a change and how much it benefits them. I don't have hard an fast rules for this, but one die might let them tell me that there's a car in the parking lot that someone left unlocked and it's one of the first ones they try, or two dice might let them say that a police officer stops the guy tailing them, or four dice might let them say the guard on duty is asleep or smoking a cigarette and not paying attention to his sector. I don't let them use this to do things a character option or rule already covers, or completely redefine the world by saying, for example, that the bomb they needed to diffuse is really a dud but small, plausible stuff is fair game.

This.

Seriously, i was introduced to this by Adventure! and i've been using a variation on it in every game ever since. Players have described as 'empowering'.

*Edit* Check it out, i just added my first italics tags in HTML! Woo, go me!

[Mister Andersen]

To a degree we were using AD to play wit narrative in 1st edition, also directly inspired by Adventure!

[Mister Andersen]

This has just come up recently:

Specialties: A non-human may acquire a specialty requiring a talent with an allegiance or alignment provided they possess that allegiance or alignment.

[Crafty_Pat]

Mastercraft will feature a ton of new GM and player empowerment tools, narrative control amongst them.

The action die countering thing, though... We're generally of the opinion that zero sum games are ultimately un-fun. YMMV, of course, but it probably won't make an appearance in our official rules sets.

[MugMug]

The action die countering thing, though... We're generally of the opinion that zero sum games are ultimately un-fun. YMMV, of course, but it probably won't make an appearance in our official rules sets.

Agreed. I'm generally of the opinion that someone deciding to spend an AD on something is a clear indicaiton of the importance of that thing to the person. Squashing that is bad manners.

Walter

[MilitiaJim]

The action die countering thing, though... We're generally of the opinion that zero sum games are ultimately un-fun. YMMV, of course, but it probably won't make an appearance in our official rules sets.

Agreed. I'm generally of the opinion that someone deciding to spend an AD on something is a clear indicaiton of the importance of that thing to the person. Squashing that is bad manners.

Walter

It seems to be a PC option about keeping something you just fouled from going FUBAR, not about the GC crushing character dreams.