House Rules for Castles & Crusades

Now that I'm a couple of sessions into running my new C&C campaign, I just wanted to write down and formalize my house rules that I'll be using...

• characters who are spellcasters must have a score of 13+ in their class's Prime Attribute; non-spellcasters need a 9+ in their Prime Attribute

• the Prime Attribute for Rangers is Dexterity, not Strength

• characters can increase one of their attributes over time as they level up, based on the combined total score of their six main attributes: (added 11/23/13)

               Attribute Total            Increase An Attribute

               50 or less                   At 2nd level, and every two levels afterward

               51-75                        At 3nd level, and every three levels afterward

               76-90                        At 4th level, and every four levels afterward

               91 or greater              At 5th level, and every five levels afterward

• spell preparation rules 

• saving throw penalties for defending against spells are based on the level of the spell, not the level of the spellcaster; the penalty for saving throws triggered by monster abilities are based on half the monster's HD, rounded up (added 11/23/13)

• characters are knocked unconscious when they are reduced to 0 HP - the 'death threshold' (the point at which a character dies) is (5 + CON modifier) as a negative number, or (10 + CON modifier) for characters with Constitution as one of their Primes (edited 12/9/12)

• initiative in combat is determined each round by rolling a d6, adding the character's DEX modifier

• a 'critical hit' in combat is defined as either a natural 20 (unless only a 20 will hit), or a roll that exceeds the target AC by 10 or more - this does the maximum amount of damage for the attack, and allows a second roll, which does in addition normal damage if the second roll hits, or maximum damage again if the second roll is also a critical hit

• blunt weapon attacks that reduce a monster or NPC's HP to 0 or below may, at the attacker's option, knock the monster out instead of killing it (this is why clerics use blunt weapons - it's hard to convert the heathens if they're dead (unless you're a necromancer, or course))

• a combatant can forgo taking damage from a successful attack by sacrificing either a shield or a weapon, under the assumption that is was shattered while parrying/deflecting an incoming attack - the only caveat is that it must make a certain amount of sense for the defender's shield or weapon to be able to absorb the damage of the incoming attack... in practice, this generally means that the incoming attack must either be a blunt or cutting weapon (not counting daggers), as piercing attacks usually would not break an opposing weapon or shield - the defending item to be sacrificed can be either a shield, or pretty much any weapon except a dagger (not counting main-gauches, daggers just usually aren't used much as parrying weapons) (a variant of Trollsmyth's 'shields shall be splintered' rule)

• melee combatants get a 'free attack' if an opponent with a notably shorter weapon (i.e. dagger vs sword, sword vs spear) closes into melee range, if an opponent moves within the combatant's strike range without stopping to defend themselves (i.e. running around or through the minions to get to the main bad guy), or if a melee combatant turns their back to flee without making a defensive tactical withdrawal - the free attack occurs when the opponent moves into the combatant's strike range, separate and independent of the combatant's normal attack on their initiative count (modified 2/24/13)

• any piercing or edged attack that does damage will also cause continual bleeding until bandaged or healed - the wounded party will lose 1 HP per minute for the next 1d10 minutes per such attack (damage not to exceed the original amount of damage inflicted by the piercing/edged attack) (added 2/24/13)

• once per game session, a PC may declare that a henchman/hireling/follower suffers the results of any single attack that the PC takes instead of the PC, if it is reasonable that this could occur, based on the current location of the follower in relation to the PC, and the nature of the attack (added 11/17/12)

• once per session each person at the table (DM included) may roll a d30 instead of whatever die the situation normally warrants. The decision to use the d30 must be made before the roll (swiped from Jeff's Gameblog)