Microlite74, Sully's Houserules

Microlite74 Extended Edition, Sully's Houserules 

The following Houserules will be in effect for my upcoming Microlite74 Play-By-Blog game, which is still recruiting players. If you are interested in joining this game, email me at sully33 at gmail dawt com. 

Races: all the races offered seem pretty well true to the source material. One thing, however, immediately jumped out at me, and that was Gnomes getting a +1 to both Strength and Dexterity. Dexterity I agree with, as they are a small and nimble people, but Strength just doesn't make a lick of sense to me, so we'll change that to a +1 to the Mind attribute instead. 

I may also cook up a few of the 4E races, such as Tieflings and Dragonborn, down the line. 

Classes: all the classes are solid, but I will only be allowing the "Standard" classes to start (Fighter, Ranger, Paladin, Thief, Cleric, Druid, Magic-User, Illusionist), while the "Optional" classes (Assassin, Barbarian, Bard, Monk, Mystic, Sorcerer and Warlord) will have to be "unlocked" through the course of player exploration in the campaign. 

Alignment: The Microlite74 alignment system is pretty vague: Light, Dark, or Neutral. I prefer more colorful terms to express a characters alignment, such as "Neutral Hedonistic" or "Chaotic Ugly". Alignment is really more just guidelines for role-playing anyway. Any magic item that has alignment requirements will be adjudicated on the fly based on an individual character's history in the campaign to date. 

Virtues and Vices: I think this is a nice little role-playing tool to go along with alignment. I crossed out the line containing "Determined" and "Hidebound" and then numbered the chart down from 1-20 so it could easily be rolled on with a D20 for randomness, if desired. 

The different Battle Stances just won't get used, except for "Full Defense", which will be an option as an action in combat. It grants a bonus to Armor Class in exchange for not attacking that round. 

Special Combat Situations: the only thing that jumped off the page as ripe for abuse here is the "Knockout Blow", which as written allows a character to make an attack that stuns the target for a number of rounds equal to how much the AC was beaten by (and more for Thieves!). This is something that I think should be included in with Combat Tricks and Stunts, so that's where it will go. Alternatively, I'm the kind of DM that will allow players to knockout an opponent instead of killing them outright when HP are dropped to zero (except in the case of a critical hit). 

Next up we'll tackle the Microlite74 Companion, as there are some optional rules there that I would like to include in our game.