My House Rules. Please Comment

[JCD]

Jumping is the Rule: Angels don't Fall by a poor dice roll. They get a choice. An angel CAN become Outcast by dice but to become Damned requires a choice, one that is very hard to undo.

Body Hits are configured using the GMG alternate rules. Humans get stronger; Celestials are now only as difficult to destroy as a small car (sigh)

Soul Hits are equal to the total Forces of the Celestial per Force. An Impudite of 10 Forces has 10 Soul Hits per Force; 100 total. This makes Celestial Combat MUCH deadlier. You need to be Celestial yourself to take advantage of this fact. Additionally, there is no recalculation of Forces and attributes until after combat is over. Note well that there are some very rare weapons which can do Celestial Damage when wielded Corporeally. These are Dolorous Weapons.

Dodge: Alternate Dodge rules are also in effect. If your CD on a successful dodge is higher then the unmodified CD of the attacker, he misses totally. If you succeed but have a lower CD, you still get to take that many Body hits from your damage.

Celestials in new vessels are clumsy and a bit more obvious. Not as bad as the Alien baddie in Men In Black, but you get the idea. Frequent use of the vessels will belay this.

Transit from Earth to Heaven via Trauma take a while. Malakim still don't suffer Trauma, but no 'immediate' turn around.

Essence can be expended for non-combat miracles. The cost will tend to be high, however.

Curtis wants to hide a book in a wall of baggage lockers in the airport. They have been deactivated due to TSA restrictions. He walks up and puts an Essence in to activate the machine. He dumps another to 'pay' and open the unit. To later remove the book, he would have to pay the same two Essence.

Every Celestial and Ethereal gets the Corporeal Song of Nimbus at Corp Forces Level for free. 'Flashing the 'lo' is intrinsic in their nature and is an easy way to get out of (or into) trouble. Superiors, however, generally frown on it's use as a violation of the Secret, and it's noisyness makes it problematic.

Every Celestial gets the Numinous Corpus of Wings at level/1 (Just because the GM likes winged angels and demons)

Humans get all the Free Skills in Corporeal Players Guide. They also get the benefit of the 'routine task' skill determination in the same.

As a very general rule, Disturbance is detectable at about 20 yards a point. However, the GM reserves the right to make it's audibility plot dependant. You have been warned!

[Jason]

I love reading how people handle house rules.

Originally Posted by JCD

Jumping is the Rule: Angels don't Fall by a poor dice roll. They get a choice. An angel CAN become Outcast by dice but to become Damned requires a choice, one that is very hard to undo.

I like this rule and I don't. I feel like it makes really great sense for those situations when you might not even realize you're doing something dissonant, like when a Kyriotate possesses someone for five minutes, leaves the person with an extra fifty bucks in pocket, but gets dissonance for unwittingly making the person late for an important meeting and lose their job. But if a Seraph tells a lie, or a Mercurian harms a human, that IS a conscious choice to go against their nature, so I'd be less forgiving there.

One rule I like (I can't remember if it was from these boards or the GMG) is that angels can "pervert" their resonance and use the corresponding Band's resonance if they want, which is a great way of modeling "choice to be dissonant" that would become a temptation to an angel whose own resonance is cut off due to high dissonance and Choir-specific discord...

Body Hits are configured using the GMG alternate rules. Humans get stronger; Celestials are now only as difficult to destroy as a small car (sigh)

I have been considering using something like this too because combat takes forever in our game, but I want to do something that leaves humans feeling relatively wimpy. I'd also like vessel level to feel like it's worth spending 3 points on even if you don't have high Strength.

The general guideline I've been going by is whether someone could be killed by a full-power (CD 6, without bonuses for being insanely high-skilled) shotgun blast versus dagger thrust.

I think a full-power shotgun blast (12 damage) should be able to at least stun, and probably render unconscious, even a high-powered celestial. A full-power knife thrust (6 damage) should only take out celestials who are within the human-range of total Hits, and should only be survived by the toughest humans.

I'm still experimenting with different ways of doing this, but it hasn't been a pressing issue since my players' PCs only have as many Corporeal Forces as the average human. One thing I have considered is saying that each character's "Hits" don't correspond 1-to-1 with the damage they take; rather, they only have as many Body Hits as Corporeal Forces plus vessel level, and they take 1 "Hit" every time they take damage, and lose potential bonus Hits if the damage they take is especially grievous (a head wound, more damage in one strike than their Total Forces, or something).

Soul Hits are equal to the total Forces of the Celestial per Force. An Impudite of 10 Forces has 10 Soul Hits per Force; 100 total. This makes Celestial Combat MUCH deadlier. You need to be Celestial yourself to take advantage of this fact. Additionally, there is no recalculation of Forces and attributes until after combat is over. Note well that there are some very rare weapons which can do Celestial Damage when wielded Corporeally. These are Dolorous Weapons.

My players avoid celestial combat at all costs already, so I'm not sure I need to make it even scarier for them.

Dodge: Alternate Dodge rules are also in effect. If your CD on a successful dodge is higher then the unmodified CD of the attacker, he misses totally. If you succeed but have a lower CD, you still get to take that many Body hits from your damage.

I want to chance Dodge rules too, again because combat takes too long. I have been considering making the rule that anybody can do a Full Dodge, which allows you to spend the whole turn dodging with no bonus or penalty to Agility, as many times as you need to. Other than that, though, you can dodge as many times as in a turn as your Dodge skill (minimum of 1). That way, we could preserve the idea that you can dodge but the attacker can still get a piece of you, but you can reduce the total number of rolls overall (and make it a little easier to picture, as it's weird that someone can pull of an attack and still dodge five guys at once).

Celestials in new vessels are clumsy and a bit more obvious. Not as bad as the Alien baddie in Men In Black, but you get the idea. Frequent use of the vessels will belay this.

I like this.

Transit from Earth to Heaven via Trauma take a while. Malakim still don't suffer Trauma, but no 'immediate' turn around.

I think this makes Malakim a lot less scary from Hell's perspective, but maybe that's what you were shooting for. Personally, I wouldn't make it take any longer than already needed for people to get back into the party after dying; I play with people who have to drive 1.5 hours just to meet in person, and it is hugely problematic for them to face Trauma or Temporal Projection and be taken out of the game for so long. That might just be me, though.

Essence can be expended for non-combat miracles. The cost will tend to be high, however.

I'd have a hard time keeping track of which "miracles" don't already duplicate the effect of Songs. The example given kind of sounds like the Song of Machines, for instance, which would make me wary about allowing just anyone with a spare point of Essence to use it.

Every Celestial and Ethereal gets the Corporeal Song of Nimbus at Corp Forces Level for free. 'Flashing the 'lo' is intrinsic in their nature and is an easy way to get out of (or into) trouble. Superiors, however, generally frown on it's use as a violation of the Secret, and it's noisyness makes it problematic.

Every Celestial gets the Numinous Corpus of Wings at level/1 (Just because the GM likes winged angels and demons)

I have been considering doing the same (and/or just giving everyone a free Ornamental Numinous Corpus that at least makes their Choir/Band obvious). There's always that scene in the "angel movie" in which the angel reveals its true nature by spreading wings, and I'm not sure that slipping into celestial form is necessarily a good replacement for this. Plus, it kind of stinks that ethereals have no way of showing their true nature otherwise.

Humans get all the Free Skills in Corporeal Players Guide. They also get the benefit of the 'routine task' skill determination in the same.

I do not have the CPG yet, but I figure I'll do the same when I do. I figure most humans should have Driving and some other skills at a base level, unless it fits a character concept not to. I may even just let human PCs have some extra character points specifically for mundane, non-combat skills.

As a very general rule, Disturbance is detectable at about 20 yards a point. However, the GM reserves the right to make it's audibility plot dependant. You have been warned!

I use the "did anyone hear that?" rule from the GMG, and adjust as needed for plot purposes. I will check on each character's Perception score to calculate variable distances, but for a light disturbance I want to make sure someone hears, I may just tell the most Perceptive character (or make the most Perceptive NPC aware of it).

[JCD]

Originally Posted by Jason

I love reading how people handle house rules.



I like this rule and I don't. I feel like it makes really great sense for those situations when you might not even realize you're doing something dissonant, like when a Kyriotate possesses someone for five minutes, leaves the person with an extra fifty bucks in pocket, but gets dissonance for unwittingly making the person late for an important meeting and lose their job. But if a Seraph tells a lie, or a Mercurian harms a human, that IS a conscious choice to go against their nature, so I'd be less forgiving there.

One rule I like (I can't remember if it was from these boards or the GMG) is that angels can "pervert" their resonance and use the corresponding Band's resonance if they want, which is a great way of modeling "choice to be dissonant" that would become a temptation to an angel whose own resonance is cut off due to high dissonance and Choir-specific discord...

(Facepalm in shame) Darn it. I forgot that one. I like that one a lot too. It is added. It makes a lot of sense to me. IIRC, it automatically gives the Angel 2 Dissonance and it can't be removed by tether service. You got some splaining to do to your Superior!

I had this one great scene with a Mercurian talking to a traitorous servant who was too Dissonant to read her relationships. Finally, he realized that the only important relationship she had was with him! This essentially marked his slide from Mercurian to proto Impudite.

I have been considering using something like this too because combat takes forever in our game, but I want to do something that leaves humans feeling relatively wimpy. I'd also like vessel level to feel like it's worth spending 3 points on even if you don't have high Strength.

The general guideline I've been going by is whether someone could be killed by a full-power (CD 6, without bonuses for being insanely high-skilled) shotgun blast versus dagger thrust.

I think a full-power shotgun blast (12 damage) should be able to at least stun, and probably render unconscious, even a high-powered celestial. A full-power knife thrust (6 damage) should only take out celestials who are within the human-range of total Hits, and should only be survived by the toughest humans.

Well, let's extroplate. This puts the maximum body for any Celestial to 48. IIRC, this is half what the GMG body rules allow...but how many players buy vessel/6 or max out strength?

You probably won't like the rule change since it actually makes humans beefier.

My players avoid celestial combat at all costs already, so I'm not sure I need to make it even scarier for them.

This is actually for the players. Mine avoid Celestial combat too. However they want to kill things...

I think this makes Malakim a lot less scary from Hell's perspective, but maybe that's what you were shooting for. Personally, I wouldn't make it take any longer than already needed for people to get back into the party after dying; I play with people who have to drive 1.5 hours just to meet in person, and it is hugely problematic for them to face Trauma or Temporal Projection and be taken out of the game for so long. That might just be me, though.

That is a logistics issue, not a game one. Hmm. Until I joined the board, it never even occured to me that this was such a scary thing in the game. Malakim went up...got a new vessel and came down. Their 'scariness' was the fact that they would do, say and attempt anything to kill a demon. In a nursery school? Malakim don't care. Have the secrets they really want? Malakim don't care. They are the fierce robot killers of Heaven (which is why they are kept on such a short tether.)

I have been considering doing the same (and/or just giving everyone a free Ornamental Numinous Corpus that at least makes their Choir/Band obvious). There's always that scene in the "angel movie" in which the angel reveals its true nature by spreading wings, and I'm not sure that slipping into celestial form is necessarily a good replacement for this. Plus, it kind of stinks that ethereals have no way of showing their true nature otherwise.

Curtis, my Impudite of Belial PC, has a steady 100 degree F temperature. Only 1.4 high but it's obvious to anyone who touches him.

[Acolyte]

Originally Posted by JCD

Jumping is the Rule: Angels don't Fall by a poor dice roll. They get a choice. An angel CAN become Outcast by dice but to become Damned requires a choice, one that is very hard to undo.

I don't like this, mostly because Angels don't really Fall because of poor dice, as either willful violation of dissonance conditions or poor planning around dissonance conditions has to happen several times before a Fall as a risk (excluding Interventions, and even then that's the GM's call). The road to Hell is slippery, and not everyone who ends up there means to. Also, Jumping doesn't work as well for the Elohim to Habbalah transfer. However, the "perverted resonance" idea is pretty nasty. I'd pitch it to my players but I know they'd never use it, not really.

Body Hits are configured using the GMG alternate rules. Humans get stronger; Celestials are now only as difficult to destroy as a small car (sigh)

I also am not a fan of this. *grin* My players love absorbing enough damage to kill several humans and still staying upright, especially because I tend to describe things as obvious mortal damage. It's not that taking a shotgun blast to the face doesn't bloody up a Vessel, it's that obliterating the top few layers of skin and muscle so that in many places bone is showing and blood is dripping everywhere doesn't affect the celestial inside very much. Serious corporeal battle usually leaves the PCs looking like traditional movie zombies, carrying their innards or holding their jaws in place so they can speak. But I wouldn't mind putting this rule in place, either.

Soul Hits are equal to the total Forces of the Celestial per Force. An Impudite of 10 Forces has 10 Soul Hits per Force; 100 total. This makes Celestial Combat MUCH deadlier. You need to be Celestial yourself to take advantage of this fact. Additionally, there is no recalculation of Forces and attributes until after combat is over. Note well that there are some very rare weapons which can do Celestial Damage when wielded Corporeally. These are Dolorous Weapons.

This is pretty ouchy and horrifying. You imply but do not specify that you can still lose Forces post-combat...meaning that the Song of Healing (Celestial) is a must inside of combat to save your Forces when it's over...which is bothersome. I don't find celestial combat that cumbersome (except for Dodging, see below), and it's extremely rare. Nor do I find recalculation to be that much of a big deal, since 2/3rds of the time the Force loss doesn't matter inside that one combat. While I wouldn't bother to implement this houserule, it wouldn't bother me as a player.

Dodge: Alternate Dodge rules are also in effect. If your CD on a successful dodge is higher then the unmodified CD of the attacker, he misses totally. If you succeed but have a lower CD, you still get to take that many Body hits from your damage.

Coming from the VP (not d20) Fading Suns system, for a long time I misread how many Songs/rolls are resisted/contested. While I've fixed several of my mistakes, for Dodging I subtract the CD of a successful Dodge roll from the overall power+CD of the attack, so even a good Dodge against a strong attack only partially negates the blow (and since you're not comparing CD vs. CD, but CD vs. CD+Power, more damage is likely to get through...cue the cinematic sprayage of viscera). However, the already long IN combat is made much longer by free Dodging (it also makes Dodge a must-have skill everyone should rank at least once, which annoys me), so I'm going to institute that if you plan to Dodge, you must announce it at the start of the round and it will apply a penalty (probably -2) to anything else you try to do during the round (Songs, attacks of your own, bomb-defusing rolls, etc). Otherwise, no Dodge. This is also harsher than Jason's limited Dodge rule.

Celestials in new vessels are clumsy and a bit more obvious. Not as bad as the Alien baddie in Men In Black, but you get the idea. Frequent use of the vessels will belay this.

This isn't a bad thing to add; in my game this typically comes out through RP, with normal humans constantly askance at how the angels are weird people. Hilariously enough, two of my PCs have foreign accents (one Irish and one Scottish, even though the game takes place in Indiana), so the one American-accented PC makes a recurring joke of explaining away their idiosyncrasies as evidence of them being "furriners."

Transit from Earth to Heaven via Trauma take a while. Malakim still don't suffer Trauma, but no 'immediate' turn around.

It depends on how close the nearest Tether is, and whether or not the Malakim can get through it. I rule that you cannot descend to Earth at your last location if you died there, rather interpreting that to be "you can also descend at the last place you willfully ascended". I find it interesting that you feel so strongly about this.

Essence can be expended for non-combat miracles. The cost will tend to be high, however.

I do this as well, citing the section of Good Omens *grin* when Aziraph. and Crowley discuss miracling a stain off a shirt. While I am loath to bring up D&D, the (extremely) expanded description of the prestidigitation spell found in the 3.0e book Tome and Blood provides a very excellent list of what I consider minor miracles easily performed for 1 or 2 Essence. I'm cheap, and I like to reuse reference material *grin*. While this could butt up against some Songs, I'd rather err on the side of giving PCs more abilities and players more fun. I mean, these are angels and demons we're talking about.

Every Celestial and Ethereal gets the Corporeal Song of Nimbus at Corp Forces Level for free. 'Flashing the 'lo' is intrinsic in their nature and is an easy way to get out of (or into) trouble. Superiors, however, generally frown on it's use as a violation of the Secret, and it's noisyness makes it problematic.

You know, that's a very, very good rule. Consider it added to my houserules. I'll skip the wings, though I might consider the Ornamental NC for Word/Choir/Band. Honestly, humans aren't the only ones without enough skills, and I tend to be pretty generous in that area with PCs and NPCs alike. Few humans in, for example, Atlanta, reach the age of 18 without learning how to Drive. Few humans in, say, Zaire do...but a surprising number of humans for New York City don't, either. I apply the "story trumps all" rule heavily when it comes to assumed skills.

[JCD]

Originally Posted by Acolyte

I don't like this, mostly because Angels don't really Fall because of poor dice, as either willful violation of dissonance conditions or poor planning around dissonance conditions has to happen several times before a Fall as a risk (excluding Interventions, and even then that's the GM's call). The road to Hell is slippery, and not everyone who ends up there means to.

A style thing. I see your point. They choose to put themselves into that position that the dice could inflict them. I see that. However, in the same way I avoid mind control, telling someone who really wants to play an angel that he now is a demon is difficult. At that point, it's most likely that the player a) quits or b) retires the character anyway. Not terribly wed to this one, but I like freedom for players.

***

Please note that I am juxtaposing these two statements purely for my own amusement (grin):

My players love absorbing enough damage to kill several humans and still staying upright

However, the already long IN combat is made much longer by free Dodging

***

This is pretty ouchy and horrifying. You imply but do not specify that you can still lose Forces post-combat...meaning that the Song of Healing (Celestial) is a must inside of combat to save your Forces when it's over...which is bothersome.

Not my intention. In the midst of combat, if Curtis takes 10 points of Celestial Damage (the example indicated) then he has lost a Force then and there. If he 'throws a Celestial Bandage on' AFTER the 10 points, it's till too late. It's gone. I just don't want to drag out the combat by pulling out the calculator.

so I'm going to institute that if you plan to Dodge, you must announce it at the start of the round and it will apply a penalty (probably -2) to anything else you try to do during the round (Songs, attacks of your own, bomb-defusing rolls, etc). Otherwise, no Dodge. This is also harsher than Jason's limited Dodge rule.

I like that. I may consider adding that too.

This isn't a bad thing to add; in my game this typically comes out through RP, with normal humans constantly askance at how the angels are weird people.

Hear hear! I have my PCs constantly comment on how odd and strange humans are. I'm sure they are just as weird to people...though that varies according to Choir/Band and time on Earth. A new Calabim would not have as much of a clue as a Mercurian on Earth a century.

It depends on how close the nearest Tether is, and whether or not the Malakim can get through it. I rule that you cannot descend to Earth at your last location if you died there, rather interpreting that to be "you can also descend at the last place you willfully ascended". I find it interesting that you feel so strongly about this.

You know...now that you mention it, I actually do feel pretty strongly about it. However, it is more of a style thing. When I see a Celestial lose a vessel, I see a bunch of forces scattered, slowly gathering back at the Heart to eventually reconstitute. Malakim reconstitute immediately but I don't see traveling from Earth to Heaven, particularly in that damaged state, to be immediate.

I do this as well, citing the section of Good Omens *grin* when Aziraph. and Crowley discuss miracling a stain off a shirt. While I am loath to bring up D&D, the (extremely) expanded description of the prestidigitation spell found in the 3.0e book Tome and Blood provides a very excellent list of what I consider minor miracles easily performed for 1 or 2 Essence. I'm cheap, and I like to reuse reference material *grin*. While this could butt up against some Songs, I'd rather err on the side of giving PCs more abilities and players more fun. I mean, these are angels and demons we're talking about.



You know, that's a very, very good rule. Consider it added to my houserules. I'll skip the wings, though I might consider the Ornamental NC for Word/Choir/Band. Honestly, humans aren't the only ones without enough skills, and I tend to be pretty generous in that area with PCs and NPCs alike. Few humans in, for example, Atlanta, reach the age of 18 without learning how to Drive. Few humans in, say, Zaire do...but a surprising number of humans for New York City don't, either. I apply the "story trumps all" rule heavily when it comes to assumed skills.

I'm glad we found some common ground. Essence is costly, even for an Impudite (Trust me, I KNOW). I also agree on the 'story trumping rules' thing. The backstory of Curtis includes about a century in one city. Can you imagine how well he would know that city by that time? But to put in appropriate levels of area knowledge would seriously distort the character.

I am thinking about adding 50% more resource points subject to GM approval.

And as far as the wings go, I am still up in the air on that one...

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by JCD

I am thinking about adding 50% more resource points subject to GM approval.

I like this and wouldn't mind putting it into a campaign myself ... with a slight tweak. My ruling would be that the "bonus resource points" could only be spent on abilities related to current or past Roles. So if your character lived in London for a century under three different names, your Area Knowledge: London or England could come out of that. If he spent time in the Russian military holding off a Baal-inspired Napoloeon, those bonus points could cover the necessary gun skills, Tactics, Russian ... maybe even Riding, if he was an officer. You just can't use it to acquire every Attunement in the list and go hunting for more ....

(My take only -- YMMV and probably will)

[JCD]

Originally Posted by Rocket Man

I like this and wouldn't mind putting it into a campaign myself ... with a slight tweak. My ruling would be that the "bonus resource points" could only be spent on abilities related to current or past Roles. So if your character lived in London for a century under three different names, your Area Knowledge: London or England could come out of that. If he spent time in the Russian military holding off a Baal-inspired Napoloeon, those bonus points could cover the necessary gun skills, Tactics, Russian ... maybe even Riding, if he was an officer. You just can't use it to acquire every Attunement in the list and go hunting for more ....

(My take only -- YMMV and probably will)

Very nice. I was thinking of caveats. This does quite nicely.

[Acolyte]

Originally Posted by JCD

However, in the same way I avoid mind control, telling someone who really wants to play an angel that he now is a demon is difficult. At that point, it's most likely that the player a) quits or b) retires the character anyway. Not terribly wed to this one, but I like freedom for players.

I do agree that Falls/Redemptions should definitely be part of an overall plan between the GM and the players of the game...and I think any seriously dissonant angel's player should at least be considering the consequences.

I am thinking about adding 50% more resource points subject to GM approval.

I like this and wouldn't mind putting it into a campaign myself ... with a slight tweak. My ruling would be that the "bonus resource points" could only be spent on abilities related to current or past Roles.

While that does encourage good backstory (which I like), this is what I do:

All PCs (I've only had celestials so far, but I assume I'd do this for anyone else) get an extra 2x character points on creation, where x is the number of the PCs' Forces. However, x of those points MUST be spent on Skills (either Role- or backstory-appropriate ones), and the other x points MUST be spent on Songs suitable to Word/Band/Role. This gives PCs a lot of options, without letting them snag a dozen attunements. It also ensures that the PCs can actually do what they are good at (high TNs for skills and Songs) while still including something cool (like a cool Servant, Relic, or Servitor Attunement). All of my PCs have used this extra freedom (not Freedom!) not to wildly munchkinize their celestials, but to get cool abilities otherwise not worth the price--and any GM savvy enough to run IN should be able to give out extra abilities while squashing attempts at powermongering.

The only problem I've forseen with this is that Servitors of Faith try to downplay Song use (and I suppose to a lesser extent this applies to Dreams as well, although there are plenty of good Corp/Eth Songs). I'd obviously be willing to compromise on this point for that type of Servitor, and find a different way to ensure cool abilities without forcing the PC to take Songs he'd never use.

[tHEhERETIC]

Originally Posted by Acolyte

I also am not a fan of this. *grin* My players love absorbing enough damage to kill several humans and still staying upright, especially because I tend to describe things as obvious mortal damage. It's not that taking a shotgun blast to the face doesn't bloody up a Vessel, it's that obliterating the top few layers of skin and muscle so that in many places bone is showing and blood is dripping everywhere doesn't affect the celestial inside very much. Serious corporeal battle usually leaves the PCs looking like traditional movie zombies, carrying their innards or holding their jaws in place so they can speak. But I wouldn't mind putting this rule in place, either.

I really like how this works conceptually. While I prefer the relative parity of the GMG rules, it's always been hard for me to wrap my mind around the angel/vessel relationship. For this reason JCD's house rule totally makes sense to me

Originally Posted by JCD

Celestials in new vessels are clumsy and a bit more obvious. Not as bad as the Alien baddie in Men In Black, but you get the idea. Frequent use of the vessels will belay this.

but at the same time I think of a vessel as a hydraulic piece of equipment, if nothing else. You can't walk on a broken bone, and neither muscles nor brakes work very well if you've bled them dry. The zombies imagery makes me rethink that whole idea. Not sure I'll use it, but it's a nice wake-up call.

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by JCD

Jumping is the Rule: Angels don't Fall by a poor dice roll. They get a choice. An angel CAN become Outcast by dice but to become Damned requires a choice, one that is very hard to undo.

I know that a lot of people like this rule, but I don't. It's based on an incorrect assumption. The canon rules for Falling already make it the choice of an angel whether to Fall or not - an angel cannot Fall unless he is Dissonant, and an angel cannot become Dissonant without choosing to become so.

All of the Choir Dissonance conditions (save for the Malakim's, who can't Fall anyway) can be restated as "act as the Choir's corresponding demon" - you have to choose to become a demon at least partway in order to get Dissonance that way. A Seraph chooses to move toward Hell when he lies, a Cherub chooses the same when he doesn't care what happens to his attuned, and so on.

All of the Superior Dissonance conditions can be restated as "do something your Superior doesn't like" - you have to choose to put yourself before your Superior in order to get dissonance that way, and selfishness is one of the defining traits of demonkind.

The "pervert your resonance" trick that makes an angel temporarily become a demon and nets the angel two Dissonance is something that the angel must willingly attempt.

An angel can't Fall from merely acting like a demon once. He has to willingly act as a demon would act at least twice (or three times if the GM doesn't allow resonance perversion) before he can Fall "by a poor dice roll". You do it once, it might be a mistake; you do it twice, it might be a coincidence; you do it three times... well, to quote from The Hunting of the Snark, "What I tell you three times is True." If the angel chooses to continue acting like a demon even after that, he's made his choice for Hell clear.

I'd leave the canon rule in place, as written.