Alea Iacta Est

Meaner Addiction

In order to make the Drugs rules in the BoVD more vicious, consider the following change to the addiction rules.

Many of the following are epic, and hence have Character Level 21 as one of their prerequisites.

At high levels (such as Glorious Few, the Epic Ravenloft game I seem to have gotten myself into) some of the metamagic feats could be stacked in a particularly devious and twisted way. The following are suggestions to referees who wish to curb this; things put as 'recommendations' should be considered DM rulings for my games, other things are not (yet).

Those of you familiar with the d20 Star Wars, Stargate, Spycraft, Farscape or any of a number of others (including Unearthed Arcana for D&D), this system should be old news. However, the version I like to use is a little different to the UA version and most of the others (since the others don't have undead, for a start), so it is still worth reading through this document.

The rules for epic characters (which have now made it into the SRD, to an extent) say that the first twenty levels (or HD) contribute to the character's base attack bonus and saves, and then the epic progression takes over. However, this means that a fighter 20/wizard 20 gains a full attack bonus then goes on to learn a full complement of spells, but a wizard 20/fighter 20 learns only feats from his fighter levels and does not improve his combat, being forever stuck with minimum attack bonus. Although the FAQ to the ELH specifically confirms this, I do not think players should be penalised for the order in which they took their classes (except for the differences at first level, which are not affected by this house rule).

For most humanoids, monstrous humanoids and other mortal races the rule of adding hit dice to class level and level adjustment works quite well. However, it is a clear disadvantage for characters who are lumbered with a dozen humanoid hit dice when they could be gaining class abilities, extra skill points or extra hit points.

More a statement of campaign style than of rules, players (especially those of outsider PCs) should be warned that outsiders in my campaigns are subtlely different to those found elsewhere.

A polymorphed or shapechanged character does not take on average physical ability scores for the race he is morphed into, as polymorph other describes.

These d20 house rules don't warrant their own pages.

The following house rules are (mostly) standard for my D&D games, although some of the more unusual may be marked as optional even in my stuff. Get me to list the variants I'm using before a game begins.