House Rules



There are a couple of different rules present in DnD: Khorvaire which are not in the standard D&D 3.5 rulebook, or have been changed from the standard rulebook.

Bonds and Dispositions
Bonds and Dispositions are rules that originated in the Dungeon Word tabletop game that encourages roleplaying and interaction between player characters. I have decided to incorporate these rules to do just that.

Bonds
Bonds are little interactions between each of the characters, that can be resolved or strengthened, earning extra EXP for both characters involved in the bond.

An example bond: ''You do not trust ___ and for good reason. What reason is this? (___ keeps stealing from the party)''

This can be resolved by trusting in the character again, or strengthened by not trusting them more. Both characters will earn experience from either result. An example of resolving is to earn the trust back of the chosen character by them no longer stealing, or it would be strengthened if they continued to do it. Once the bond is resolved or strengthened, it will be crossed off the list and a new bond will take it's place. Characters should always have bonds with each other.

Dispositions
Dispositions are little goals the characters try to accomplish each sessoion to help stay true to their character.

An example disposition: I will look after myself before helping others.

In the pursuit of character development, a disposition can change and alter through the course of the game. For example: A disposition of "I will protect everyone" can develop into "I will protect those closest to me" and even "I will protect myself" in some extreme cases. If you feel as though your character's disposition is changing don't hesitate to say.

Rewards
The experience for resolving or strengthening a bond is 50, and fulfilling a disposition is 100. The experience value of bonds increases by 25 per character level, and 50 for dispositions. This is to help bonds not become redundant in the later levels.

Fun fact: At level 1, if you resolve all 3 bonds and fulfill your disposition then 250 experience will be awarded.

At level 2, this value would increase to 375, and at level 3 it would be 500 so it's definitely worth trying to roleplay your bonds and dispositions.

Critical Hits and the Critical Fumble Table
In the original D&D 3.5 rules if you were to roll a critical hit, you'd have to roll again to confirm the critical hit. This can result in disappointment after a brief moment of "Oh shit I just rolled a 20", to realise it just ended up being a normal hit.

For simplicity's sake, if you roll a natural 20 (or whatever your weapon's threat range is), it is an instant critical hit and no need to roll again to confirm it. This applies to both players and monsters.

The Critical Fumbles Table
The critical fumbles table is a variant rule that means you can completely mess an attack up if you roll a 1. However instead of instantly critical fumbling like in the above mentioned rule, you will roll to confirm if you critically fumble.

If you roll a natural 1 on an attack roll, you fumble and must roll a flat d20 with no modifiers. If that d20 roll is <6 then you roll a d100 on the critical fumbles table and take whatever happens on the number you roll. This can vary between simply falling over, dropping your weapon, breaking your weapon or hitting an ally (which can vary between half damage or a critical hit).

Fun Fact: It's a 5% chance to roll a 1 on a d20, an additional 25% chance to roll 5 or lower, thus resulting in a 1.25% chance to critically fumble.

Spells Per Day
I personally felt like characters with spells were a bit limited until the much later levels to be able to cast an adequate number of spells per day to make a difference. For this reason I've made it so your spell stat modifier will directly affect the number of spells castable per day, significantly increasing the number of spells available and adding additional flexibility to spellcasters.

In the core rules, by having an intelligence score of 16 (+3 stat modifier) you would only get 1 additional spell, up to 3rd level spells, and had no impact on 0th level spells. This means at level 1, instead of having 3 0th and 1 1st, he would have 2 1st. But this doesn't feel very significant and leaves wizards feeling very useless for extended fights or multiple fights in a day.

With my updated rules, that +3 bonus would increase it from 3 0th level spells and 1 1st level spell, to having 7 0th level spell and 4 1st level spells, therefore providing a lot more use and versatilitiy to wizards and other spellcasters and should hopefully make things more fun.

Simplified Weapon Proficiencies
The usual 3.5 rules for weapon proficiencies are you can use all common weapons, and if you're a fighter, rogue, paladin or barbarian you can use martial weapons, but generally speaking you need a feat in order to use a specific martial or exotic weapon without penalties. This is a bit limiting in what D&D has to offer, so I changed up the rules a little for weapon proficiencies.

Characters can choose a specific weapon category to be proficient in and grants them access to all weapons in that category. For example, if you wanted to use a longsword, instead of having to spend a feat on Martial Weapon Proficiency just to use that longsword, you just put a point into 'Martial One-Handed Melee Weapons' and you can use the longsword alongside other martial one handed weapons like a battleaxe or a warhammer. The same rule applies to Exotic Weapons, if you wanted to use a heavy repeating crossbow you would put a point into Exotic Ranged Weapons, which would also grant you access to hand crossbows and bolas.

Perception Stat
The perception stat was introduced as a seventh character stat, alongside Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma. The perception is not in the core rule book, so why add it?

Two reasons.

One, to gives the players one more stat to work with. When building a character the stat rolls are important, they are literally what makes or breaks the character. Giving one more stat roll could be the difference between being stuck with a 12 for strength because you're a fighter and you had shitty rolls, or luckily rolling an 18 to make your strength score much more respectable.

Two, some skills don't make sense without Perception. Listen, Search, Sense Motive and Spot are skills which have been changed to use Perception as their stat, because it makes sense. Search running off Intelligence? Spot and Listen running off of Wisdom? The same stats you need to craft spells or heal the wounded? It doesn't add up.