Here is a summary of my house rules for Swords & Wizardry (with appropriate links). They are intended, when used together, to simulate more closely the ‘swords and sorcery’ genre, as exemplified in the fiction of Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber. Nonetheless, most of these house rules can be used on their own in a ‘standard’ or ‘classic’ ‘Old School’ D&D game (including Original D&D, Basic D&D, RC D&D, Labyrinth Lord, 1e AD&D, OSRIC, etc.).
1. Miscellaneous House Rules. Some minor rules for ability scores and combat (critical hits, fumbles, etc.)
2. Hit Points and Constitution. A system for treating hit points as ‘superficial’ damage (i.e., exhaustion, minor bruises, etc.), and constitution as ‘serious’ damage. The former is easy to heal, whereas the latter is not.
3. Wisdom as Sanity. A system for treating a character’s ‘wisdom’ score as a measurement of his/her sanity.
4. Background Professions. A list of ‘background professions’ (e.g., alchemist, minstrel, sailor) for characters, designed to give them some more flavour, and a few minor special abilities.
5. General Task Resolution Mechanic. A system for using the generic ‘saving throws’ in S&W as a ‘general task resolution mechanic,’ i.e., a system for determining whether characters succeed at various things.
6. Class-Based Weapon Damage. This system uses a character’s class in order to determine how much damage that character can do with a particular weapon.
7. The Thief. My version of the ‘thief’ class, inspired primarily by the ‘Gray Mouser’ character.
8. Everyone can Backstab. Pretty self-explanatory, I think.
9. Fighting Styles for Fighters. A list of six different ‘fighting styles’ (e.g., berserker, shield-master, etc.) available to fighter characters.
10. Magicians and the Colours of Magic.
11. Experience Points. Quite simply, an alternative system for assigning experience points to characters.
Enjoy, gentle readers!
EDIT (added 16 November 2009): A PDF of these rules, courtesy of Benoist, can be found here.
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Helpful index and nice stuff, as usual.
ReplyDeleteAny chance of sticking it all together in a pdf?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words, Matt.
ReplyDeleteFFB, I plan to produce a pdf at some point. I'm debating whether to incorporate these house rules directly into the core S&W rules document -- essentially creating a new, S&W-based game (like 'Ruins & Ronins', which modifies S&W in order to create an 'oriental' FRP) -- or simply as a list of rules options (i.e., essentially what is available now on the blog).
Since you first started posting these house rules they've been seeping into my games and now I can't imagine running S&W without them.
ReplyDeleteThank you :)
I'm glad that you've found the house rules helpful, Sean. Thanks for your kind words!
ReplyDeleteJust started using these for a game on Google Wave - the Thief player is very pleased with the class.
ReplyDeleteI have to figure out how to use Google Wave in order to get the 'old gang' together again!
ReplyDeleteVery useful and very nice. Thanks for sharing your ideas and thoughts. It helps me to improve my own house rules =).
ReplyDeleteI hope you don't mind a necromantic thank you, Akrasia (and to Benoist)!
ReplyDeleteGlad people are still finding these helpful!
ReplyDeleteNice stuff there! :)
ReplyDeleteVery cool! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteAkrasia- I have a question about your spells- I was hoping that Crypts and Things would answer this, but alas it seems he went to the cast and forget method rather than your house rules.. How do you handle caster level in terms of HP consumption? Fireball doing X damage per caster level? Does a mage casting Magic Missile at level 5 pay the same amount of HP as a mage casting at level 1 (given the variance in damage)?
ReplyDeleteWrathofzombie, I've treated the HP cost as based on the level of spell. So yes, a 10th level mage would suffer the same HP cost as a 1st level mage. On reflection, though, variable costs might make more sense. (This never really came up during playtesting, since only villainous NPCs cast such spells.)
ReplyDeleteKeep in mind that most 'damaging' spells (fireball, magic missile, etc.) are categorized as 'black magic', and so can cause corruption (loss of WIS) as well as HP loss.
@ Akrasia- That is basically what I figured would be the case. Yes the first level and tenth level are paying the same costs, but that risk of madness is always present. It does make sense that a 10th level Wizards spell would be more powerful.
ReplyDeleteI have to say I'm a real fan of your spell casting rules. I'm using those, your HP/Con, and Wisdom as Sanity rules.
Very awesome! Thanks
Thanks for the kind words, wrathofzombie! :)
ReplyDeleteNp. Thank you for the hard work and awesome house rules :)
ReplyDelete