SIFRP House Rules

[shadowninja]

Actually I am narrating a SIFRP campaign in the beginning of Usurper War and I want share and discuss the House Rules used:

- Base Difficults: the standard difficults is a little strange and I change to be similar a passive values contests (each difficult is equivalent to a ability value, minus one), the difficults are: Easy (equivalent to Ability 1, diff 3, minimum ability 1), Routine (equivalent to Ability 2, diff 7, minimum ability 2), Challeging (equivalent to Ability 3, diff 11, minimum ability 2), Formidable (equivalent to Ability 4, diff 15, minimum ability 3), Hard (equivalent to Ability 5, diff 19, minimum ability 4), Very Hard (equivalent to Ability 6, diff 23, minimum ability 4) and Heroic (equivalent to Ability 7+, diff 27+, minimum ability 5). I will test this in the next game session.

- Fighter Benefits: I make many changes in Fighter benefits and create many others (like Two-Handed Fighter I, giving Powerful or damage +1 to two-handed weapons and adaptable weapons when used with two hands), but the main change is: all Fighter Benefits requiring sacrifice all bonus dices to use now sacrifice only the pre-requisite bonus dices to buy then.

- Bannerman: I am using Bannerman as a Influence Holding not as Power Holding and Heirs is not a Influence Holding or any type of holding (I still thinking about how work Heirs). Power represents the direct house's military force.

- Wealth holdings: I want break down some wealth holdings in different steps, like Marketplace/Port/Sept (Minor), Marketplace/PortSept (Major) and Marketplace/PortSept (Greater), but I not write this yet.

- Combat & Intrigue Defense: Why attacks receive specialization bonus but defense no? I apply Dodge specialization to Combat Defense and Empathy specialization to Intrigue Defense.

- Two-Weapon Attack: When attack with two weapons, the damage is (Main Weapon Damage) + 1 + Off-hand weapon bonus.

[Azai]

How has adding dodge bonus to combat defense effected your game?

Things get too powerful? Lots of swings and misses? Evens it out?

[Lord Ben]

How has adding dodge bonus to combat defense effected your game?

Things get too powerful? Lots of swings and misses? Evens it out?

I haven't tested it myself but I would imagine it widens the gap between combat focused characters and those who spread out their abilities more.

[Zorbeltuss]

I think it would help mitigate the fact that attacks (whether it be persuasion, fighting or deception) generally outclass combat/intrigue defense for characters that are good at it.

[shadowninja]

How has adding dodge bonus to combat defense effected your game?

Things get too powerful? Lots of swings and misses? Evens it out?

Add the Dodge to Combat Defense don't affect much the game, all my players don't put more than 2B in Dodge, all attacks still hitting, but can reduce a degree of damage. My players prefers high Fighting values and defense comes in second place.

Min/Max players can put all your specialization points in Dodge to get a great bonus, but think, this make him bad (or worse) in all other things to focus in combat, can't die by weapons, but can die by words.

I haven't tested it myself but I would imagine it widens the gap between combat focused characters and those who spread out their abilities more.

Why you can apply specialization to make attacks, but can't use specializations to defense? This is what I think.

I developed other house rules, including suggestion from other people from the forum.

[Lord Ben]

I didn't say you can't, I just point out what affect it would have. It rewards people for taking even more XP away from things like survival or persuasion, etc and rewards them for spending it in combat.

Not to mention during gameplay you can spend 50 XP to get the Shield Expert quality for +1CD only when you have a shield or you can buy Dodge up by 5 for +5CD always.

[shadowninja]

I didn't say you can't, I just point out what affect it would have. It rewards people for taking even more XP away from things like survival or persuasion, etc and rewards them for spending it in combat.

Not to mention during gameplay you can spend 50 XP to get the Shield Expert quality for +1CD only when you have a shield or you can buy Dodge up by 5 for +5CD always.

In my game I modified Shield Mastery (not Shield Expert) to give +1CD and reduce the shield bulk in 1. I created to Improved Shield Mastery (following the same way of Armor Mastery) giving +1 CD and keeping half of defense when making attacks using shield.

Exist another problem, the character must have Agility 5 to have Dodge 5B and all points expendend in Dodge don't go to other things.

[Lord Ben]

If you like higher CD it works, but lets say I have a 3 ath/awa/agi character and I want to boost my combat defense. I can spend 30 XP for +1 or I can spend +30xp for +3. Mathmatically speaking maxing out your dodge bonus to agility is going to be your best 20-40 points you ever spend on the character in any character that expects to face combat on a regular basis. Spending specialty XP becomes "Okay, I've maxed out dodge what do I have left for everything else?"

By assigning a large bonus to something that had no bonus previously you drastically change the math involved in making characters and assigning points. If that's a benefit you enjoy that's fine, but it's something that should be pointed out to people.

[Azai]

I was wondering if this "tackled" the problem I hear about combat is just mashing into each other.

I haven't played yet, but we've all set our up characters. It looks like if you have high skill, you will really easily hit someone but even if you say have 6 in Fighting, or 5, you still will get hit quiet a bit. Unless I am seeing something wrong. (Because for Combat Defense you have to spread out xp over a few skills, to get your total)

I may be missing stuff though.

[Lord Ben]

Depends on how you build your character. Combat is as much about learning how to take wounds as it is avoiding them. If you run around in full plate with a greatsword and no shield you'll take a beating pretty fast. Superior Breastplate, spread some XP into awa/agi/ath, shield, etc and you'll do just fine.

Say Athletics 4 with longsword (+1) they do base 5 damage.

Now say you're in the BP with 3 awa/4ath/4agi with a shield (not min/maxed or unreasonable at all). Your CD will be 14 but they'll actually need a 19 to harm you since you asorb 5/5 of the damage. Tower shield and fighting defensively (-1D attack, +3 CD) and they'll need a 24 to harm you. And breastplate, 3/4/4, shield isn't exactly a big stretch for most important combat types. Artisan - Master Armorer is a pretty typical wealth holding too IMHO.

With the house rules above that character would easily have +4CD on top of all that.

[Lord Ben]

My own ideas for house rules would be to:

Defense: This works

Influence:
**Banner houses under influence, same point system as the book
**10 influence for important NPC's "owned" by the House given stats by the players (heirs buying the heir advantages, etc).
**Edit the caps on Status to provide an easier move to the middle of the pack (5-6 for the Lord) and MUCH harder to go above that. 7-8 should be the Starks, Lannisters, Warden of the South, etc. It should be eaiser to get to Bolton/Umber levels of 5-6 where you're important and valued bannermen but not running the Kingdom.

Lands:
**Move cities/towns/vilages off of Land.
**Provide some type of benefit to owning empty holdings. It's totally unsexy to have 4 grassland holdings or a few lightly forested hills but there should be some reason to do so listed.

Law: This works, I'd maybe add in a note that when you lose wealth you lose an extra one at low levels and at super low levels you lose 1d6 instead (like a reverse market/port)

Population: Move hamlets/towns/cities under population instead of land.

Power: Add some additional special abilities to some types of units. Raiders have the ability to gather wealth when parked in another families holdings, scouts get some type of ability to justify having them, etc.

Wealth: Add a few things that simulate the market/port mechanics for population and others. Granary/Mill, etc.

[Azai]

Depends on how you build your character. Combat is as much about learning how to take wounds as it is avoiding them. If you run around in full plate with a greatsword and no shield you'll take a beating pretty fast. Superior Breastplate, spread some XP into awa/agi/ath, shield, etc and you'll do just fine.

This is what I mean. Say if a character wanted to forgo a shield, and just wield a sword. Parry, dodge, attack. All that. It seems, for this system, it'd be very hard to do that if you were facing decent fighters (4s, 5s). Also it seems the game is really against fighting groups. As in one vs a few. Which makes sense, and I like. But I also like to let my players become that "blademaster" show off every now and then.

[Lord Ben]

It's excellent against fighting groups, just not groups of skilled swordsman.

If we recreated the tower of joy and had 7v3 all very good to great level fighters it's likely there would be 8 dead people at the end of the skirmish and only 2 alive.

[Lord Ben]

Say if a character wanted to forgo a shield, and just wield a sword. Parry, dodge, attack. All that.

Acrobatic Defense is the key there.

Agility 4, +4B acrobatics, Awareness 4, Athletics 3, and with a lesser action you're sitting at a 19 combat defense. If your lesser action is a cautious attack, 22. And that's all without defensive weapons, bucklers, water dancer, armor mastery, quality armor, etc.

Absolutely silly levels of min/max is an acrobatics defense based character with a greatsword.

[shadowninja]

Influence:
**Banner houses under influence, same point system as the book
**10 influence for important NPC's "owned" by the House given stats by the players (heirs buying the heir advantages, etc).
**Edit the caps on Status to provide an easier move to the middle of the pack (5-6 for the Lord) and MUCH harder to go above that. 7-8 should be the Starks, Lannisters, Warden of the South, etc. It should be eaiser to get to Bolton/Umber levels of 5-6 where you're important and valued bannermen but not running the Kingdom.

Im my games I use Influence to represents bannermen, but I want put other things in Influence, but no Heir (Heirs alredy buy a Quality to that) or important NPCs to the House. May be some Wealth Holdings involving persons (Meister, Sept) can cost Influence too.

Lands:
**Move cities/towns/vilages off of Land.
**Provide some type of benefit to owning empty holdings. It's totally unsexy to have 4 grassland holdings or a few lightly forested hills but there should be some reason to do so listed.

Population: Move hamlets/towns/cities under population instead of land.

Good move remove cities from Lands and change to Population. I don't have any idea to use additional Lands...

Law: This works, I'd maybe add in a note that when you lose wealth you lose an extra one at low levels and at super low levels you lose 1d6 instead (like a reverse market/port)

You can apply the Law fortune penalty to reduce your House stats when you suffers a bad Fortune.

Power: Add some additional special abilities to some types of units. Raiders have the ability to gather wealth when parked in another families holdings, scouts get some type of ability to justify having them, etc.

I want not limit the Power stat to 70 or find aother way to increase the number of soldiers. I agree with "special powers" of some units, the book suggest something like that, but don't create anything solid to use in game.

Wealth: Add a few things that simulate the market/port mechanics for population and others. Granary/Mill, etc.

Adjust Wealth Holdings to create "steps" of cetain Holds, like Spet (divide in Minor and Greater Spet) and adjust other, like Artisan (10 for the first, 5 for each additional Artisan).

[nakraal]

Does anyone have the feeling that the current House management rules do not promote a proper power struggle and "Game of Thrones" as in other systems, for example TSR's Birthright?

I mean that I love the system in the rest of the fields - Char creation, combat, intrigue, warfare, but the
domain management seems a bit plain. It does not have mechanisms to have different houses clash in a political/resource control conflict using backstabbing, secret deals etc like the above mentioned setting did.

If someone watch it from a global scope Its just like every house could just spend its months quietly rolling house fortunes checks and adjusting their resource scores, having no need to interfere with each other.

Other than that, the House Fortunes bonus/penalties could maybe be affected by the ratio Law:Population:Lands than from
the independent scores.

--------edited-----------
Roughly something like:

Pop>Law>Land small HF penalty + some kind of minor rebellion chance
Pop>Land>Law big HF penalty + some kind of rebellion chance
Law>Pop>Land moderate HF bonus
Law>Land>Pop small HF bonus
Land>Pop>Law severe HF penalty + some kind of banditry
Land>Law>Pop small HF bonus + some kind of minor banditry

[Lord Ben]

I think it'd be up to the GM not the rules to provide the struggle.

[BrianD]

I kinda like adding the Dodge specialty to Combat Defense so it has some effect when you're not just full-on defending, but maybe treat it like the Athletics (Run) specialty's bonus to Movement where every 2B invested gets you an extra 1 point of speed and have every 2B in Dodge gives you a +1 Combat Defense? 1B in a specialty giving you the same benefit as 1D in an ability just seems wrong to me.

[coldwind]

Don't forget - bonus dice on attacks only increase your average roll, not your maximum. It seems a bit unbalanced to allow them to increase your maximum defense. Admittedly, you don't usually roll for your defense, but then, that's what the dodge action is for.

For comparison, look at the free attacks granted by reach in the advanced combat, or even the maneuver action - those just look at your passive Fighting, no bonus dice included.

[shadowninja]

Don't forget - bonus dice on attacks only increase your average roll, not your maximum. It seems a bit unbalanced to allow them to increase your maximum defense. Admittedly, you don't usually roll for your defense, but then, that's what the dodge action is for.

For comparison, look at the free attacks granted by reach in the advanced combat, or even the maneuver action - those just look at your passive Fighting, no bonus dice included.

It's not unbalanced, look the passive value rules, when a specialization apply to the roll, add 1 for each 1B possessed (pag 52). Using Free Attack, you can apply specialization too, using the same rules. Why not use the same to Combat Defense?

[coldwind]

Don't forget - bonus dice on attacks only increase your average roll, not your maximum. It seems a bit unbalanced to allow them to increase your maximum defense. Admittedly, you don't usually roll for your defense, but then, that's what the dodge action is for.

For comparison, look at the free attacks granted by reach in the advanced combat, or even the maneuver action - those just look at your passive Fighting, no bonus dice included.

It's not unbalanced, look the passive value rules, when a specialization apply to the roll, add 1 for each 1B possessed (pag 52). Using Free Attack, you can apply specialization too, using the same rules. Why not use the same to Combat Defense?

Huh. Love learning stuff. Missed that paragraph for the longest time.

[Zorbeltuss]

Typically, the mechanics of things like that requires you to take a benefit to be allowed to add the number of specialities to a derived value.

[BrianD]

It's not unbalanced, look the passive value rules, when a specialization apply to the roll, add 1 for each 1B possessed (pag 52). Using Free Attack, you can apply specialization too, using the same rules. Why not use the same to Combat Defense?

That said, Combat Defense isn't a passive test result, it's the sum of three abilities. Having Agility 4 and Agility 3 (Dodge 1B) provide the same bonus to CD doesn't really make sense to me when the passive results of those two stats would be 16 and 13 respectively, especially considering raising Agility after character creation costs you 30 XP and raising your Dodge specialty only costs you 10 for the same +1 boost to CD.

The gap between passive test results and the two defense scores is actually one of the few big things that bug me about the SIFRP system. For example, to get a passive Awareness result of 12 requires only 10 XP; to get a Combat Defense of 12 requires an investiture of 120 XP. The problem is that both the Stealth and Fighting abilities are pretty much exclusively tested against those two values, and they require the same amount of XP to improve. Essentially, your returns on investing in Fighting are way higher - putting 100 XP into Fighting 6 gives you a cool 99% chance of hitting someone who invested 20 more XP than you towards boosting their CD stats, whereas putting 100 XP into Stealth 6 earns you a measly 28% success rate against someone who spent the same 100 XP on Awareness 6. Something's just always seemed off to me about that.

[Azai]

I might be a little confused, but doesn't Dodge 1B only apply to CD if you take the action of dodging Or do the bonus dice just automatically add to your CD?

[Kival]

It's not unbalanced, look the passive value rules, when a specialization apply to the roll, add 1 for each 1B possessed (pag 52). Using Free Attack, you can apply specialization too, using the same rules. Why not use the same to Combat Defense?

That said, Combat Defense isn't a passive test result, it's the sum of three abilities. Having Agility 4 and Agility 3 (Dodge 1B) provide the same bonus to CD doesn't really make sense to me when the passive results of those two stats would be 16 and 13 respectively, especially considering raising Agility after character creation costs you 30 XP and raising your Dodge specialty only costs you 10 for the same +1 boost to CD.

The gap between passive test results and the two defense scores is actually one of the few big things that bug me about the SIFRP system. For example, to get a passive Awareness result of 12 requires only 10 XP; to get a Combat Defense of 12 requires an investiture of 120 XP. The problem is that both the Stealth and Fighting abilities are pretty much exclusively tested against those two values, and they require the same amount of XP to improve. Essentially, your returns on investing in Fighting are way higher - putting 100 XP into Fighting 6 gives you a cool 99% chance of hitting someone who invested 20 more XP than you towards boosting their CD stats, whereas putting 100 XP into Stealth 6 earns you a measly 28% success rate against someone who spent the same 100 XP on Awareness 6. Something's just always seemed off to me about that.

Just reduce passive defense to 3*skill (and perhaps compensate with 2 times for boni dice); it's a big mistake to give the passive ability better averages then when actively rolling.