Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 214 - House Rules to Make Your Game Easier

Episode Date: March 10, 2024

Sometimes you as the DM want to make the game a little easier for the players.  Maybe the players are new or just want a game where they feel like gods among men.  There are a myriad of ways to make a game easier.  In this episode, I discuss a few of them.   #dmtips #gmtips #houserules #dnd5e #pf2e

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. In 5e, rules is written, it's an action to give the potion to someone, and they take an action to drink it. Make one or even both of those bonus actions to give the PCs more options to keep their allies in the fight. Thank you for listening to the Taking20 Podcast, episode 214. Some house rules I use to make games easier for the players. Thank you for listening to the Taking20 Podcast, episode 214. Some house rules I use to make games easier for the players. I want to thank this week's sponsor, Krabs. I love Krabs, but they never give to charity.

After all, they're all shellfish. Hey, we have a website, www.taking20podcast.com. All the episodes are available there. You can leave reviews and comments. Come on by and say hi. I do want to thank you for all the kind words I received about my wife's surgery. She's doing well and on the road to recovery. I probably could have honestly crapped out a half-assed episode last week, but I'd rather take the time and do it right. Speaking of which, as I held the onion of this episode before I started peeling, I thought I could cover both easier and harder house rules in a single episode. That was not the case at all.

So this week we're talking about the easier rules, and next week I'll talk about the harder ones. You can probably hear about 15 minutes in when I realize that there is no way in hell I'm going to get all the material covered that I had written. My apologies for the two-part episode, but let's dive into it. Some players love difficult, gritty games where survival is the exception rather than the rule. Some players love games where they aren't really challenged much and they're generally expected to win any and every encounter they could ever have. Both can be great games depending on what your

group wants to play. Interestingly, by the way, I've heard veteran RPG people say something like 5e is tabletop easy mode where there's never a challenge, and someone else will say that Pathfinder is crunchy and you only survive if you're lucky. That's the type of tabletop role-playing you get with each game. My take? Both of them are wrong. Games can be as difficult or as easy as the DM wants to run and the players want to play. One of the ways you can adjust difficulty of the game is the rules and house rules you use at the table. Now let's start with the basics. Built into the game system itself are ways to adjust difficulty of the game.

These are the numbers used, bonuses, and penalties given by the GM in a given situation that the characters are in. The most common numbers that can be adjusted are the difficulty class, or DC, of checks being made, or the armor class, or AC, of their opponent and the hit points of the creatures they're fighting. Adjusting the AC or DC up to a higher number generally makes the characters succeed less often. They won't hit the creatures often or pick the lock as easily, sneak past the guards, talk their way out of trouble, or whatever the characters are attempting. Higher ACs and DCs make the success rarer, situations tougher, and generally less certain for the characters. Conversely, lowering those two numbers makes situations easier, success more likely, and more certain. The crunching mechanics

of how to adjust AC and DCs honestly could be an episode all its own, and it depends on what game system you're playing. 5e, for example, uses a design concept known as bounded accuracy. Bounded accuracy means there are limits to the bonuses you can receive on rolls. In previous editions, the bonuses could stack to very high numbers. I mean, very, very high numbers. I remember a high-level fighter that had something like an 80 armor class and plus 50 on their attack rolls. Imagine that fighter against 10 level 1 kobold. There's almost no way for the fighter to miss and almost no way for the kobolds to hit. The fighter is a god among mortals and combat is relatively pointless. Meanwhile,

if a level 1 party stumbles into a high-level undead tomb, they are mortals among a god, and they have very little chance of even damaging the undead. When 5e was released, the goal was to have the d20 roll carry the greatest weight as to whether a skill check or attack was success, not the bonuses that you could stack on that roll. Generally, they tried to keep the maximum target DCs or AC to about 30, with exceptions for truly powerful monsters and NPCs. Bonuses climb at a pretty steady level, and items don't pull things too far off the traditional progression, meaning all creatures are at least threats to hit and damage others almost regardless of level.

Yeah, okay, you send a CR-10 elephant against some commoners and it's going to be one-sided, but the elephant won't be completely untouchable like it would be in the 3.5e days. Bounded accuracy was a great design choice for the game, and it's probably been the best decision made when they released 5e. Nothing really feels out of range, rules as written. Meanwhile, Pathfinder 2e is built around a common set of DCs depending on the level of the encounter or difficulty of the check. For example, level 1 characters when attempting to do something should generally be trying to hit a DC 15 to accomplish the task, whatever it is. Earn money, identify a

spell, recall knowledge, and yes, sometimes even hit creatures. The GM is free to adjust this DC up or down depending on the difficulty of the check. For example, someone attempting to recall knowledge about the title and artist of a song being played might generally be, let's just say, a DC 15. But if the song is particularly popular or played very often in an area, the GM could decide that that's an easy check and make it two points easier, or DC 13. Or if it's a very easy check, maybe it's DC 10 because it's five easier. All that friggin' bard knows is how to play a toss a coin to your witcher and he plays it every single damn night, so that's a DC 10 to identify it. Conversely, more difficult

checks can be similarly raised. Aces for both systems flex a little more depending on other aspects of the creature you're fighting. A low AC, effective attack, high damage creature is a glass cannon that tries to get as much damage done in a short time they'll probably survive. Meanwhile, high armor class, weak attacks, low damage, and high hit point creatures are plotters, using their stamina to whittle away at character hit points and abilities. I'm way in the weeds of difficulty class theory, and I'm going to stop there. If you want me to take a really, really deep dive into 5e or Pathfinder 2e DC design decisions, let me know. But let's get back to our topic. That's one of the first decisions you can

make when building encounters. Do you use the creatures as laid out in the bestiary or monster manual, or do you tweak values for weaker and stronger creatures? Pathfinder 2e has one advantage in this regard in that it has built-in mechanics for elite and weak versions of creatures. Those mechanics are well understood, laid out clearly, and easy to apply even on the fly. 5e is also not that difficult, but my general tip would be be cautious adjusting too much because you want to keep creatures within that bounded accuracy range. But you're a smart GM and knew all that already. You know about DCs and ACs and all that numerical stuff. Jeremy, you're wasting my time and I'm here for better tips than that. Alright, okay. Let's talk about some other tweaks you can make. There are some, for lack of a better name, choice toggles you can make about the area or the PCs are or the entire campaign as a whole.

For example, the first toggle, how available is healing, especially magical healing. Campaigns where cure light potions and healing tinctures are as common as milkweed pollen make hit point damage generally no more than an annoyance. make hit point damage generally no more than an annoyance. Hit points become a pool to survive a single combat until you can get a breather and start two-fisted drinking red healing liquids and be ready for the next room of the dungeon. Contrast that with campaigns where magical healing is rare or maybe even non-existent. Now the PCs are dependent on natural healing processes which are generally slower and less powerful than magical ones. Hit points now need to last entire forays into the dungeon, and PCs may need days or even weeks to recover between dungeon trips. You can dramatically affect how difficult your game is by how free you hand out

healing magic. I do encourage you to keep an eye on how difficult your combats and sessions are, and watch the reactions of the players. adjust the availability of healing magic accordingly. Secondly, and related to the previous tip, how easily can the party rest? Are long rests easy to come by and the players have their characters crash in any old room of the dungeon, awaken, refresh hours later without really being bothered? If so, then players are going to spam their abilities to use between rests because they can get them back so easily. But at the opposite end, or not only long but even short rests hard to come by without being interrupted by someone or something that's looking to eat the PCs. If so, your game just became a lot tougher. So similar to prevalence of healing magic, keep an

eye on how your campaign is going versus how difficult you want to be and adjust the ease of rests accordingly. Jeremy, you're an idiot. We can figure all that out. What else you got? Oh, okay. Well, let me take a look back here in my older tome of knowledge. And let's focus on choices you can make to make your game easier. One of the more obvious ways you can make your game easier is to give stuff away for free, or at least more readily.

The nickel question is, what do I mean by stuff? Answer? Yes. You could give them in-game currency and resources. Think about gold or credits, free hospital stays, curative magic, free room and board, a free key per castle. magic, free room and board, a free key per castle. Any of these in-game items makes the game easier by removing, or at least easing, one or more mundane concerns the PCs may have. But maybe you think it's just cheap to give the players a house in the suburbs with 2.1 kids, a dire wolf, and a white picket turret with laser cannons. Okay, all right, I hear you. But what about free things for their character builds? Two prime examples of this would

be additional feats and a free archetype in Pathfinder 2e. In 5e, let's face it, feats exist to make the characters special. They set them apart from the common non-adventuring rabble. Usually feats give characters abilities or at least capabilities that they didn't have previously. And these things that rank and file NPCs likely don't have. The 5e feat, Great Weapon Master. If your character has that feat, when you score a critical hit with a melee weapon or drop a creature to zero hit points,

you can make one melee attack as a bonus action. And you can choose to take a minus five penalty on attack roll. If it hits, you get plus 10 to the damage. That's a strong feat, and honestly, I can't remember a melee character I've built past about level five that didn't already have that feat or grabbed it as soon as they could. Why? Because Joe the ruffian thug probably doesn't have it, and if Joe wants to start some melee shit with my character, I want to make sure Joe knows how big a mistake they made picking a fight with me. Giving an extra feat makes that character more powerful, gives them more options, makes encounters, whether they're social, combat, or maybe even both, easier. Don't

go insane, but if you want the characters to be more powerful in your game, consider giving them an extra feat and see what that does to the power balance. In Pathfinder 2e, meanwhile, you could also give free feats, but you get a new feat every level already. So for Pathfinder 2e, I'd say consider using the free archetype optional rule and give players that option for their character. If you want more information about the free archetype set of rules, see page 194 of the Pathfinder 2e Game Mastery Guide, or head over to Archives of Nethis and read the rules there. The free archetype is generally given at level 2 and grants an archetype feat in addition to class feats at every even level. As the Game Mastery Guide says, sometimes the story of your

game calls for a group where everyone's a pirate or an apprentice at a magic school. Giving a free archetype makes characters more versatile, with options available that they may not otherwise have. Maybe the fighter briefly toyed with becoming a spellcaster, and the free archetype gives them a cantrip or two to solve those problems that are harder to solve with a hammer or a dagger. You could always limit the number of archetype feats they could possibly take to, say, half of their total level. Those additional feats and archetypes in 5e and Pathfinder 2e give characters options on their turn rather than swing, swing, swing, I'm done, next. Another optional rule you can include is the free-form racial or ancestry bonuses to open up more options

for your characters. In the old 3.5e days, it was rare to see a gnome barbarian, for example, because gnomes had penalties to strength. Same for orc wizards or arctic kobold clerics, because they had racial penalties to intelligence and wisdom. So what do you do if your character loves the idea of playing a gnome fighter? Consider moving the bonuses and penalties around to other scorers to let them play what they want. By their very nature, player characters are supposed to be abnormal, stronger, better than

most people in the game world. It's not broken to take the 3.5e orc penalty on intelligence and move it to, I don't know, dexterity. Maybe this orc spent a lot of time in prayer. Their knees are chronically sore. I'm spitballing here. Maybe take the minus two to wisdom and make it a zero, but take their plus four strength down to plus two. This is already a well-documented alternate rule in Pathfinder 2e core rulebook and in 5e Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. Consider adding that to your game to make the game a touch easier and more varied for your players. Another thing you can do is make the game easier, and honestly I do this almost every time I run a game, is don't track encumbrance or ammunition for characters.

I've always joked that tracking those things changes the game from Dungeons & Dragons to Dungeons & Cost Point Accounting. Oops, hey, that's the 60th arrow you fired. Now you're officially, and I'm quoting in my notes here, shit out of luck for all of your ranger abilities that rely on your bow. That's no fun for the player, and it wasn't fun to get there, so just make the ranger deduct a gold piece for 5e or silver piece for Pathfinder 2e or some similar amount every time they're in town, and don't count ammo. Not tracking encumbrance, by the way, has a giant asterisk to my game when I run it. I don't track encumbrance as long as players don't try to take advantage of it. I had a game years ago where I was experimenting with this. There was a trap in a round room that fired like a thousand arrows over

the course of 10 minutes. The arrows were blunt and meant to knock players unconscious, but one of my players said they wanted to take the time and pick up every non-broken arrow for the room. So I just kind of hand waved it, said it's about half. Now they have 500 blunt arrows for free that does non-lethal damage, as that game system called it. I think it was the next session where I added the addendum, but I let the player keep the arrows without tracking their weight. Most of the time, tracking weight honestly isn't a fun part of the game. Anybody remember playing Skyrim, where you're overburdened and cannot fast travel would pop up? Who enjoyed trekking across the province from the ass end of nowhere to a town to sell stuff,

only to be able to move about this fast the whole time? I hated it. Screw that. Don't take advantage of me when I rule to make things easier for you, and I'll just keep making those rules that make it easier. Another rule I tend to use to make a game easier is that generally magic items automatically resize to the size needed for the player to use it. There's nothing more frustrating than finally finding that plus two chain shirt that you've been looking for and it's sized for a minotaur.

Well, it won't exactly fit your elf, will it? Too bad. You can sell it and get half the gold you need to buy one for yourself. Yourself. Yours. Yours. Yours elf. A joke here if I can find it. Moving on, imagine all magic items can resize themselves to the appropriate size for the character that needs it. Now you don't have to worry about appropriately sized magic items. They just are. Again, this is as long as the players don't try to take advantage. Oh, well, I make the Mithril shirt size up to colossal. How much can I sell it for now? Half the listed item value at medium size, you ass, unless you want me to have it shrink back to small while you're wearing it and crush your ribcage. No? Okay, quit trying to game me. This also holds true for weapons and armor, and honestly,

I've used this rule for years, and there's another more complicated rule about transferring magical properties that we do not have time to go over. But let me know if you're interested, and I'll cover that in a future episode. Pathfinder 2e, I do love what they did. They made this optional rule unnecessary with its rune system. The magic and magic items are held in runes that can be transferred between objects. That way you transfer that acidic splash damage from your current longsword to the better one you find along the way. There's a cost and or skill requirement to do so, but generally I really, really like that flexibility in my games. Another thing you can do to make your game easier is that anytime the party finds a consumable, like a wand or staff or extract or syringe or whatever it is in your game that has multiple uses,

it's always fully charged when they find it. The wand has 50 out of 50 charges. The staff has the maximum number of spell charges it can hold. If the game lets you use a healing hypo that has up to five uses before it's drained, when the PCs find it, it has five charges. Is this realistic at all? Oh, hell no. It's almost guaranteed that that 50 charge wand would have been used a few times, but if you add that dose of realism, it's one more thing you got to take care of from behind the

screen. Doing this is easier on you because you don't have to remember, oh, uh, the wand in A4 has 12 charges, but the one in B6 has 29. Unless the party witnesses an NPC use the consumable, let them start out at max usefulness and have the party start tracking the uses until it runs out. Here's one from my friend and local DM Troy that I've never tried, but I want to at some point. If you roll a natural 20 on your initiative, instead of being slotted into the initiative order where you would go numerically, you can choose where you want to start in the

initiative order. I kind of like the concept. You nat 20 to your initiative so you were ready to jump at the first sign of danger, or go right after the enemy crossbow wielder, or just after the cleric to take advantage of that sweet sweet bonus from the bless spell. Something tells me it could become too powerful, but damn that would bring sweet bonus from the Bless spell. Something tells me it could become too powerful, but damn, that would bring some exciting to the game, especially on normally kind of rote initiative rolls. Another thing you can do to make your game easier. Make critical damage require fewer rolls. Some game systems already do this, where roll once and double the damage rather than rolling twice the dice. If you're in a roll twice game

system like 5e, consider changing it to one of the following. Either don't roll at all and they get max damage on their normal dice roll, or what I prefer, they get max damage plus they get to roll one more time again. Meaning, for example, they're wielding a longsword and they do d8 plus 4 damage, they would normally on a crit roll 2d8 and add 8 to it. d8 plus 4 damage, they would normally, on a crit, roll 2d8 and add 8 to it. d8 plus 4, quantity times 2. Instead, assume you rolled an 8 on the first die, plus the 4 modifier, that's 12 damage, plus they roll their normal damage of a d8 plus 4. It speeds up crits, and they do more damage guaranteed.

There's nothing more frustrating than critting with a d8 plus 4 and rolling two 1s on the 2d8 for a grand total of... 10 points of damage on the crit. It feels bad. Let your player characters feel like badasses. You can also change potions to make the game easier. The one gaming system-specific idea here pertains to 5e. In 5e, rules as written, drinking a potion uses an action, which hurts. I think it feels painful, sometimes too painful,

so I always let my players declare one potion that they're carrying that they can drink as a bonus action instead of a full action. The thought that every character has one potion easily available on their hip in a bandolier or generally readily available on their person. Having only one potion like that makes it a tactical decision before combat starts and prevents abuse by PCs. Another change I make to potions is that they grant maximum possible healing outside of combat. In combat, you have six seconds.

You're popping the cork, swinging it as fast as possible, and tossing the bottle away quickly to stay in the fight. But out of combat, a character could take their time, get every last drop of healing elixir out of that vial. So for example, in Pathfinder 2e, a character drinks a moderate healing potion in combat. It will heal 3d8 plus 10 hit points, rules as written. However, if they're drinking that same potion outside of combat where they're not as pressed for time, it heals the maximum 3d8 plus 10 or 34 hit points every single potion. Similarly, a potion of greater healing would heal 4d4 plus 4 hit points in combat because you're in a hurry, or 4 times 4 plus 4, which is 20 hit points every time out of combat.

Last potion and idea before I move on. Make it a single action or even a bonus action to give someone a potion. In 5e, rules as written, it's an action to give the potion to someone and they take an action to drink it. Make one or even both of those bonus actions to give the PCs more options to keep their allies in the fight. In Pathfinder 2e, it only costs one action to administer a potion to the willing creature, but you need to have the potion in hand,

so that's at least another action to do it. I don't think I'd reduce that too much after all because the three-action economy is pretty good as is, except I may allow them to use their potion Bandolier to reduce the requirement to draw it. Not to get too far in the weeds, but potion economy is interesting in Pathfinder 2e, and I think it could use some further analysis. It could cost five actions to administer a potion,

by the way, rules as written. The PC may have to only see move adjacent to the friend they want to give the potion to, sheathe their weapon, draw the potion, there's three actions, administer is four actions, and then draw their weapon back, That's five actions. Almost two full rounds of actions just to administer a potion. That's a steep penalty to try to save your comrade in arms. Allow them to use a potion bandolier or quick draw potion slot to cut that down by a couple of actions. Or you can always do the Baldur's Gate three-ohm rule thing and let characters throw healing potions at their colleagues

and have them work that way. Just spike the potion onto their unconscious face. There's your 16 hit points, you bastard. By the way, I talked about that in episode 191, DM Lessons from Baldur's Gate 3. Go give that a listen. Leaving potions behind, finally, give the PCs connections to the world. I like two different methods for this, by the way. The first and easiest is to have followers for the world. I like two different methods for this, by the way. The first and easiest

is to have followers for the PCs. I'm not talking that mess with the leadership feat that can become ludicrously overpowered. Once the PCs get a reputation around town, region, village, whatever, there may be people who approach them, offering to work for them, to do jobs for them. Maybe the PCs, after they clear out an abandoned keep on the edge of town and are given keys to it, they have someone who's a good maintenance person come to ask if they can work for the PCs at the traditional pay rate. Or a good chef, butler, quartermaster, farmer, flamethrower, armory specialist, lower-level spellcasters, follower, flunky, rustlers, cutthroats, murderers, bounty hunters, and insert the rest of Hedley Lamar's speech from Blazing Saddles here. And Methodists.

Don't watch that movie, by the way, if you're easily offended. God, how did I get here? Oh, okay. The point is that you could allow minions or followers to flock to the PCs and provide services for them for reasonable game-defined salaries. Another tip to make the game easier is to change how you give out hit points. Off the top of my head, you could give out max hit points every single level, three-quarter max hit points every single level, max hit points every other level in your roll and the other ones,

whatever makes sense to you. One of my favorite ways to do this is the dual roll method. In the past, I've let players roll their hit points twice and take the higher number, and that's a way to really pump up PC hit point totals. Another thing that I've done is to turn it into a little bit of a game. They roll for their hit points, and they get to re-roll any ones, by the way, and I roll for their hit points, re-rolling any ones, but I roll behind the screen. They decide if they want to keep their roll or gamble on what I rolled for their hit points. Rarely do player characters get low hit points on a level more than once or twice in the

entire level progression, and it adds a little excitement to the level up process. If you want to make it easier for your PCs to rest, consider shortening the minimum time duration for short rests. Rules as written, I believe short rests are at least an hour. However, I've been known to allow short rests to be short as 10 minutes. It allows PCs to recover faster and reduces the likelihood of a wandering monster finding them while they're patching up and recovering abilities. It's rare that a group could take advantage or cheese this mechanic in any way, and it helps the PCs potentially accomplish more in an adventuring day. Similarly, the 5e Dungeon Mastered Guide recommends allowing two short rests per day, but if you wanted, you could allow them to short rest four or even six

times a day. This lets them use some of their powers and abilities more times between long rests. In combat, information is key. As far as I can tell, neither 5e nor Pathfinder 2e has rules as written way to tell how many hit points a creature has left. Luckily, looking at my old book here... Oh, that's a little dusty. Older D&D editions had a concept using a descriptor when a creature was below half health. The most common one I heard during those heady years was a concept known as bloodied. A character wants to know how healthy a monster looks. The DM could optionally ask the character

to make like a perception roll, but sometimes they would just give out the information when asked. If the creature was at half-hit points or lower, the DM would say, oh yeah, that alligator looks bloodied. That let the players know that this was a creature that could possibly be finished off easier than some of the others that may be closer to full health. I still use a variant of that trick. I have four categories of descriptors I use depending on where the creature is on its hit point track. If the creature is above 75% health, I'll say it looks healthy. Between 50% and 75%, the creature looks bruised. Between 25 and 50 percent, it looks bloodied, and below 25 percent, it looks battered. Easy to remember because of the Bs. Healthy, bruised,

bloodied, battered. That's it. That way, the PCs don't get a ridiculous amount of information. How healthy does your character think that alligator is? Well, if I had to put a ratio on it, it's probably 19 thirtieths of its max health. No, 19 out of 30 is between 50 and 75%, so I'd tell them the alligator looks bruised. After the cleric smacks it for another 7 damage, now it's 12 out of 30, so if anyone asks, it's bloodied. If you do this, by the way, don't break out the calculator. I'll have to figure out what 75% of 238 is. Let me put that in my keyboard, and you're not measuring components for explosives. Make an estimate. Keep the game moving. In case you're curious, by the way, 75% of 238 is 178.5.

The way you figure that out quickly, by the way, is you chop the hit points in half. Half of 238 is 119. Chop 119 in half, which gets you to 59.5. 119 plus 59.5 is 178.5. There, I know you were all dying to know how to- Shut up, Jeremy. Right. My last tip is to make a game easier. I learned from watching the amazing DM, Matt Mercer.

I noticed this in the first Critical Role campaign, where he would allow the PCs to ready not just a single attack, but a bonus attack if they had it, because of their class, their feats, their whatever. I really, really like that idea, and I'm embarrassed that I didn't think to use it before then. Rules as written in 5e, you can ready a single attack, but he allows his characters with that bonus attack to ready both of them. It makes characters more powerful and allows them to have a better chance of striking at an opportune time. In this very, very long episode,

I talked about sometimes you don't want your campaign or adventure to be a grimdark grindfest where the players feel like they're escaping by the skin of their teeth every single time they fight something larger than, oh, I don't know, a gerbil. Consider adding some house rules to make your game easier and make the PCs feel like the badasses that they are. If you do, I'd be willing to bet that you and your players would have fun doing it.

Got any topic ideas for me? Send them to me via direct message on Facebook or Instagram or via email, feedback at taking20podcast.com. Tune in next week when I'll talk about the sinister flip side of this coin, house rules and tweaks from behind the screen to make your game harder for your PCs. But before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor, Krabs. I know a crab that went to live by itself for a little while. It was a snow crab, but it became a hermit. This has been episode 214, discussing house rules to make your game easier. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your

next game is your best game. The Taking 20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube Media Production. Copyright 2024. References to game system content are copyrighted by their respective publishers.