Your tiniest houserules

[kirbwarrior]

I was thinking about what houserules I have looking over an old thread and realized a very silly one I have; Photographic Memory is a 50pt metatrait that includes itself and IQ+2. However, this doesn't change character creation (IQ10 character is just IQ8 + this metatrait), only effects that add or remove this trait (like Affliction). Coming from Third Edition and just thinking about it in general made me think that having Photographic Memory would make you smarter, but instead of directly increasing the cost of the trait I just have it so it's a part of the trait in essence.

What houserules do y'all have that have extremely little effect, cost, and effort on things?

[RedMattis]

The Evaluate Action
The evaluate action provides a +2 to hit on the first turn of evaluating. The second turn gives +1, for a total of +3. The ability able to take further Evaluate Action

The intention is to make the Evaluate action a bit more tempting.

Evaluate Mastery [1 point]
You can evaluate for an extra turn. The first two give +2 the third gives +1. (For a total bonus of +2 to hit if you evaluate for 3 turns).

The Wait Action
If a full turn passes without triggering your wait action you can take a Step and Evaluate a target without changing your turn order.

This effect is meant to model circling/carefully approaching a target with f.ex. spears readied to intercept an opponent's charge.

[Blind Mapmaker]

Since I really don't like the Dabbler perk, my tiny house rule was to bring back half points in skills from 3rd edition, but to alleviate the obvious abuses half a point in a skills gives Skill Level -2 compared to the 1-point level.

It's probably still abuseable in high-powered games with IQ and DX above 14, but it nicely solves the "I did some of that when I was younger, but I haven't really kept it up" problem for background skills without juggling multiple skills and wrapping your head around their respective levels while using a perk slot.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

What houserules do y'all have that have extremely little effect, cost, and effort on things?

Well they usually have an effect, otherwise why bother, but sometimes they don't require a lot of extra effort.

For example "All long term effects on the Fright Table use the rules for Duration of Crippling Wounds, rolling vs. Will rather than HT. Temporary Crippling lasts until you spend a full day and night relaxing in a safe environment." is a small rule change that didn't require much to implement it, but it meant that Fright checks could be far more common and have far larger modifiers than would otherwise have been possible in a long term campaign without rendering the characters unplayable, which was a pretty big change from my usual very sparing use of them.

"Successful Detect Lies reveals why the character answered as he did rather than if the answer is a lie. If he hopes to mislead you it is likely a lie, but could be carefully selected truth. Other results (wants to convince you to take a particular action, hopes you will stop bothering him with irrelevant questions, etc.) can be even more ambiguous." is also a small change, but completely alters what the skill is good for.

On the other side, lots of them are basically independent of anything already in the rules. Any number of added perks, skills, advantages or disadvantages can have major effects (and possibly costs), but traits being modular can be completely ignored with no consequences to anyone if nobody happens to have taken them.

It's rare for me to bother with a house rule of the other sort - a major rewrite of a rule subsystem that applies to everyone. I've done it to languages a couple times, because I keep thinking there has to be a more realistic approach that isn't too complex, but I haven't found it yet.... It's a lot of effort that risks breaking something that has worked well enough for most groups for decades (at this point including us, if it has never been brought up in the last 30-odd years, it can't be [too] big an issue, right), so it's pretty unlikely the effort will pay off enough to be worth it.

[Phantasm]

My only real house rule is what I call "Condensed Specialties", which is basically reverse-engineered from Optional Specialties.

Take a skill that has a lot of required specialties (f'rex: Mechanic, Engineer, Electronics Operation/Repair, Games, Piloting, etc.), but not one with a mere handful (e.g. not Beam Weapons, nor Guns when using the Alternate Guns article). To be omniproficient in that skill, increase the difficulty by one step - IQ/A with a bunch of specialties becomes IQ/H for all specialties.

(I could never get a Pyramid article written to enshrine this in any Alternate GURPS issue; the best I could get was a sidebox, but no article to go with it.)

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Simplest is this one: "IQ is now called Mind (MN)." Changes no mechanics, but I feel like it addresses "why does this add to Per/Will" better.

Slightly more complicated: "Add a number of CP to beginning PCs equal to the game's Disadvantage limit. Players may take as few or as many Disadvantages as they want, but these grant no CP. Attribute reductions still grant CP." It's not one for every game, and I still don't know what to do about templates with build-in Disadvantages, but it eliminates the need for the GM to guarantee they're slapping the player's wrist at the right frequency to make the Disads sting.

[DemiBenson]

If you make your to hit roll by exactly zero, it’s a glancing blow and does half damage.

If you make your defense roll by exactly zero, it’s a nearly-failed defense, and does half damage.

These stack, so if they both occur, the defender takes 1/4 damage.

[Donny Brook]

Fast-Draw is a skill-specific perk. Roll against the underlying skill.

[David Johnston2]

Every active spell reduces your actual spell skill for any subsequent casting.

[Donny Brook]

Buying attributes down only counts against a disad limit if doing so brings them below the racial template's base level.