"Heroic" House Rules

“Spell Casting:
A caster can always use a higher-level spell slot to cast a lower level spell. For instance, a mage who can cast 3rd level spells may use a 3rd level spell slot to cast a 1st or 2nd level spell.”

This is your only mention of magic – do you envision any other changes to magic, spells or spell-casting classes? I like flexibility and have considered the change above in general, but have not done so due to “breakthrough” spells like the no save sleep spell.

Your dodge/parry table has a lot of interesting results! I wonder how often players will sacrifice an action to use this option? What if a potential cleave were sacrificed for a dodge/parry? This would make higher level characters and Fighters better at dodging than other characters.

Thanks for posting!

Shoot, I didn’t realize the down-conversion of spells wasn’t already a rule until this thread. Looks like the availability of Cure Light Wounds might be going down…

Yes I do envision a few other changes to magic in general. Perhaps they aren’t actual changes so much as play considerations. Very little of this is set in stone and I’m open to any ideas:

  1. I want to mitigate or eliminate any spells that are essentially plot breakers, or spells that trivialize many natural challenges that would fit well in this type of campaign. Alex made a list in a thread awhile back, though I can’t remember where. Here’s my list:

Spells I would consider eliminating: Detect Evil, Read Languages, Create Water, Create Food, Tongues.

Spells I would consider reducing the power of: Knock, Find Traps, Locate Object, Speak with Dead.

  1. With regard to the Sleep spell in particular, I know what you’re driving at, but I don’t have an answer, other than I’d like to change spells as little as possible, simply because it’s a lot of work.

  2. I’ve also been considering having cantrip-styled spells for arcane casters.

I envision it as building on the concept of Spell Signatures. Coming up with them would be mostly up to the player and approved by the GM. Rather than try to explain it, here are a couple examples:

Light:
Cantrip - the caster may illuminate any translucent object (essentially a light bulb) roughly the size of an apple to shed light as a torch, as long as the caster is conscious and holding it. It may be affixed to another implement such as a wand or staff. Yes… I sort of ripped this whole idea from the scene of Gandalf in LOTR, leading the Fellowship through the Mines of Moria.

Ventriloquism or maybe Magic Mouth:
Cantrip - the caster can speak without moving his lips and counts as taking the Mimicry proficiency twice.

There is a lot of fertile ground here IMO. I’d probably want to limit the number of them… perhaps equal to the number of 1st level spells known? I’d also seriously consider them off limits for the most popular spells (such as sleep and magic missile… though making people drowsy could be really fun!).

  1. Magic Items: I would prefer to limit the amount of magic items quite a bit… Conan, nor Turin have any magic items for the most part. Actually doing that though kinda rains on the fun for players… they always get excited at the prospect of a new magic item.

Sounds similar to Crypts & Things? Take damage to hit points, when those drop to 0 take damage to constitution, when that drops to 0 die. HP heal quickly, con heals slowly.

I actually had house rules very much like this for a time when I was running Pathfinder. I derived them from the 3E Unearthed Arcana rules, which are very similar to what you’ve written here. It was a little more complex than what you have here. My players really liked it, but what I found was that I was doing more of the accounting of their hp/vp than they were.

Since you brought it up, I’ll do some thinking on it. It would certainly fit into a “heroic PC” campaign… sort of giving the PCs pseudo plot armor.

On your point #2, I’ve been tempted of late to do:

  1. a Middle Earth-like campaign
  2. a Hyborian Age-like campaign
  3. a blend of the first two
  4. just plop the PCs into R.E.H’s Hyborian Age alongside Conan

I can’t decide which one to settle on…

With regard to the chart, there are a few loose ends on it, such as if you roll “10”, but aren’t wearing any armor, what happens?

Maybe make cantrips dependant on the spells memorized? For example, if you’ve memorized a fire spell, you’ll be able to produce a small flame (such as from a lighter) from your fingers tip at will.

Yes, that is the idea. In my examples above, you would have to have the Light spell in your repertoire to be able to cast the cantrip example I gave.

for #4:
just don’t make them magic items. what’s the difference between finding a ring that gives you the ability to cast jump or knock once per day in a dragon’s hoard vs. the act of slaying a dragon being such a monumental feat that you become a warrior so fierce you can simply do that? same with spider climb, giant strength, just about anything that involves enhancing physical capabilities. They also can’t turn around and sell such boons for money, nor can their companions loot their amazing skills from their body when they die.

Except, perhaps, by eating their hearts to gain their strength…

There’s an old reference work for a Conanization of OD&D at the bottom of this page:

http://www.grey-elf.com/

including a lot of simple house rules that would be applicable still in ACKS/BX. There’s two documents; one focused on sorcery.

Jard, I love this idea. But how do you implement in play?

With a magic item, you can give a +1 sword. One member of the party gets it. How do you give out a +1 to hit and damage bonus in a way that one member of the party gets it? If it’s training, why isn’t it available to everyone?

Does one end up creating a 4E-style “Powers” tree from which characters pick at defined levels, instead of having magic weapons?
Does one use 3.5-style “inherent bonuses” to replace magic items?

(Replying to both in one)

I don’t know Crypts and Things, so I have no idea how similar they are in play!

It is very similar to the 3.5 Unearthed Arcana version, for a reason :wink: The 3.5 Unearthed Arcana is a reprint/rework/expanded version of the same rules. Some differences may also have arisen from the fact that I was just posting them off the top of my head and might not have been 100% accurate to RAW.

In fact many of these things are possible once you realize magic items don’t have to be magic items. I can think of a few scenarios off the top of my head.

First, perhaps everyone DOES get it, but at a cost, the cost being the price of a +1 weapon, which must be paid in order to hire 1 on 1 attention from an ancient fighting master who can teach you his ways. One month or more of study may be necessary, in fact the time spent “crafting” it may require not only the master, but the student.

This leads to all sorts of potential madness, such as a fighting type performing “spell research” to discover new fighting styles, which he then teaches to others who seek him out.

But if all that’s a little bit too out there, you could simply do something like giving whatever benefit you’ve concocted to the person who scored the killing blow, or to whoever built enough of a rapport with the grouchy martials arts master who is only willing to teach one student (and learning it is much different from being enough of a master to teach it).

4e also did “inherent bonuses” for dark*sun, so it’s certainly not unheard of. I think the reason you don’t see it much in old school is twofold: 1) nobody thought of it yet and 2) the +s weren’t essential to the math of being able to hit things yet.

You should be able to do low magic and then life is just difficult but feasible for old-school PCs. However if you know your PCs will be sad if they don’t get a carrot every once in a while but you want the FEEL of low-magic, you could use some substitutions like the ones proposed above.

As regards 4, you could also use non-magical but significant items in their place. The Imperial Seal, Adamant Crown of the Old Kings, Battle Standard of the First Republic, and such aren’t important because they’re magical - they’re important because they’re symbolic, and impart moral authority to their possessor. The nobility is also likely to seek them, and to have the cash to purchase them from the PCs.

One thing I’ve also done successfully is providing rare books as treasure. Each such book covers a single topic in detail, and a week’s study provides answers to a number of questions based on the quality of the book (which may be used immediately or saved for later). Information that lets you win a fight is on par with a magic sword for effectiveness, if not style.

Brilliant stuff. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Definitely! In a 3.5 campaign I ran a few years ago, rare books where the mechanism by which you “unlocked” feats and classes from the splat-books, and also contained information from the setting.

These are all ideas it would be cool to eventually incorporate into “heroic acks”.

Thanks for this link koewn! I skimmed through both pdfs last night and there is certainly inspiration in them.

I’m thinking that if you want to truly convey a sword & sorcery styled game that features larger than life characters as the PCs, you’re going to have to address the default concepts of magic. The Acheron supplement proposes the best “magic taint” concept I’ve seen to date. I really want to include that concept in some fashion in my campaign. After giving it some thought, I’ve come up with the following. The use of magic can be organized into three categories:

Benevolent Magic = Light Magic = White Magic
Indistinct Magic = Shadow Magic = Grey Magic
Malevolent Magic = Dark Magic = Black Magic

Not new… but I think this type of framework to hang magic on will work really well with recreating a setting which has the feel of Middle Earth or the Hyborian Age. I’ll post more.

This is similar to how this is done in Crypts & Things, a system I love. I had some thoughts about doing something inspired by it in ACKS for Barbarian Conqueror King but decided to keep the current system for the sake of making BCK as compatible with ACKS as possible. The idea is:

  1. No Arcane/Divine divide. All spellcaster classes use the Sorcerer class category, which has the same XP and point requirements as a Cleric, but casts and learns spells as a Mage, and does not include Turn Undead (which becomes a spell). Why use the easier progression (as Clerics need less XP than Mages to go up in levels)? Because of what I present below, i.e. many of the combat spells are DANGEROUS and a Lawful caster will never cast them. Also I wanted sorcerers with swords…

  2. Spells are divided into three categories: White (Lawful), Grey (Neutral) and Black (Chaotic). Lawful characters may learn only White and Grey magicks, Chaotic characters may learn only Grey and Black magicks, and Neutral characters may learn any spell. BUT Lawful characters get bonuses (maybe faster progression?) for Lawful spells, and Chaotic characters get bonuses for Chaotic spells.

  3. White spells are all spells which restore an object or body to its initial state (e.g. healing), plus divinations and protection spells. Grey spells are most utility spells that distort reality to a degree (e.g. levitation, flight, illusions and so on). Black spells increase entropy in a massive way (e.g. fireballs) or tamper with life or death in a way related to undeath (e.g. necromancy).

  4. Casting White spells is as usual. When casting Grey spells, the caster loses 1hp per spell level cast; a successful save vs. spells halves this (round up). When casting Black spells, the caster loses 1hp per spell level, no save allowed for this, AND must save vs. spells or lose 1 sanity (starting sanity is equal to Wisdom; when it reaches 0, roll on a “mortal mental effects” table for madness).

Yes golan, the Conan hack for OD&D that koewn provided the link to is very similar to that.

Right now, I’m thinking of using the white, grey, black magic concept more as an organizational tool to differentiate caster-types rather than making outright house rules on the matter.

For example, black magic is practiced by “mages of the black cabal” and they have their own sets of spells, such as all the necromantic and transformation spells. However, for the “sages of the white council,” such spells are forbidden, though maybe they have a few scrolls of them secreted away deep in the dungeons of their citadel hidden from those who would wish to use them!

I’m also wondering if I should re-skin the cleric class into divine spirits given mortal form (i.e. a Maiar equivalent).