Your houserule canon Options

[Laodicea]

I'm wondering what houserules you all have canonized for use in the majority of games you run or play in. You can feel free to argue about the efficacy of other peoples houserules, but I don't think that's really the point. I'm mostly here to learn how other people are playing, and adapt it for my games.

Here's mine:
Some of these are more clarifications of controversial rules than outright houserules, but I'm fine with them falling into the houserules category.

In-Debt: does not grant you the Nuyen to use. You simply owe that much Nuyen.

Summoning: I think it's too strong. I limit it severely. You can have a maximum of 1 bound spirit, 1 un-bound spirit, and 1 watcher spirit. This rule doesn't necessarily apply to powerful NPCs. This rule applies equally to Technomancers. Alternatively, I've considered making Summoners spend 1 edge per day per bound spirit. That would simply make people optimize their AngelSummoner build for edge, though. But, at least it would be edge they couldn't use for edge's intended purpose.

No PC Pixies.

Free Spirit PCs: There's basically two schools of thought for interpreting Free Spirit RAW. One makes them underpowered and one makes them overpowered. I use the underpowered interpretation.

Stick N Shock Ammo: Does not exist. The shotgun round equivalent does.

Immunity To Normal Weapons: People have argued that elemental damage cuts through this critter power. I don't allow it to unless the critter has an allergy to the elemental damage type. Hitting a Fire Spirit with a fire extinguisher or a cold damage grenade will work. Hitting a Fire Spirit with a flamethrower or shock gloves will not. If the damage has a magical source, it automatically pierces Immunity.

Hacking & Wired connections: Borrowing a page from the book Shadowplay, I've given wired connections an effective signal rating of 0. This means that anything can be hacked. I did this for practical reasons and flavor reasons. The flavor reasons can be found in the book: Shadowplay. The practical reason is that I don't like that players have to write down which of their gear is wired or not. Nor do I enjoy arguments over such petty things.

[Bearclaw]

I like most of your rules.

Here's some of ours:
Stick and shock only works in shotguns. The 1/2 impact armor doesn't work against vehicle/hardened armor, including ITNW. Vehicles still make the body + armor check and spend 2 turns rebooting if they fail. In general, anything else that doesn't take damage also doesn't make the stun check.

Initiating: Your max magic goes up 1. Then you may choose either a point of magic or a meta-magic.

Athletics: The 4 athletics skills are combined into one skill (athletics) and the 4 skills are now specializations. To avoid abuse of a silly, related rule, gymnastics dodge is no more.

[Tanegar]

All elves are bisexual. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

[Laodicea]

All elves are bisexual. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

Even the males!? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

[Fatum]

Even the males!? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

Especially males D:

Now, back to topic at hand: I've had a few instances of players trying to abuse the RAW, or just being puzzled on specific rules usages, so my houserules page mostly consists of clarifications and slight adjustments. The explanations are mostly stuff like whether Break Weapon is an opposed test, how armour mods like Fire Resistance work for multi-component armour suits, whether Energy Aura affects ranged attackers, or Paralyzing Howl creatures of the same type, and so on, and so for.
Then, we have a Look What's In This Pocket houserule: a runner is capable of spending one point of Edge normally to pull out of his pocket any piece of gear that could fit into it, and that costs no more than 500Y with no more than 12 in Availability. It's a rule that's meant to represent the difference between the character competence and player one: while the player might forget to buy a thermite bar, his Int 8 Infiltration 6 shadow is highly unlikely to make such an amateur mistake.
FFBA in our games stacks with other armour normally; and Softweave has its cost raised to 30% of the base armour price.
Most drone types have alternative models with different names but same stats, except with different propulsion methods. So any drone you can find with Walking is also available in Wheeled - just a little nice something for the riggers.
Contacts in my games have staches appropriate for their profession; so if a runner has a Connection 6 Weapon Trader contact, he's able to get most of the normal weapons right away, without waiting. Similarly, runners are supposed to be spending time training between their stated activities, so there's no training time for skills.
Threading is a Simple Action.
Any Device can have its Signal Rating set by the user to any value from 0 (wireless off) to Signal stat.
Adept initiation can at the player's choice give one Power Point instead of metamagic. If he chooses this option, however, his maximal magic is not increased.
Some Paranormal Powers can be Counterspelled (as per common sense and GM fiat).

[PresentPresence]

Contacts in my games have staches appropriate for their profession

Even the women? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif) But more seriously;

Adept initiation can at the player's choice give one Power Point instead of metamagic. If he chooses this option, however, his maximal magic is not increased.

Why do you have this stipulation? Does it make it more balanced?

[Dakka Dakka]

- SIN verification systems use the fake SIN's rating as a threshold. There is no opposed test.
- Shots can be called on narrow short bursts regardless of firing mode. Shots cannot be called on wide short bursts.
- oWod Style initiative. The player whose character has the lowest initiative announces his character's actions first. all quicker characters can interrupt him. Actios are resolved by decending order of initiative
- There are no vampires in SR, or at least the PCs will not get into contact with them.
- more when I remember them. The house rules are not formalized.

@Laodicea: Why would anyone ever bind spirits in your games? You can do nearly all you need with unbound spirits (aid study and aid sorcery aren't that great anyways). If you can only gain one additional (lower force) spirit, I would not bother in investing in binding.

Concerning your rule about ItNW and elemental damage, do you mean elemental damage from a mundane source just does not pierce ItNW, or that you don't even get the attack's AP? The former is RAW anyways. If the latter is the case, how do you handle a sniper rifle with APDS? Does that combination get the AP versus critters with ItNW? Why is it handled differently

[Laodicea]

@Laodicea: Why would anyone ever bind spirits in your games? You can do nearly all you need with unbound spirits (aid study and aid sorcery aren't that great anyways). If you can only gain one additional (lower force) spirit, I would not bother in investing in binding.

Concerning your rule about ItNW and elemental damage, do you mean elemental damage from a mundane source just does not pierce ItNW, or that you don't even get the attack's AP? The former is RAW anyways. If the latter is the case, how do you handle a sniper rifle with APDS? Does that combination get the AP versus critters with ItNW? Why is it handled differently

I don't mind if no one takes binding, or even summoning, in my games. People can take it if they want their maximum of 2 spirits + a watcher. An additional spirit is probably worth the investment. No, it's not as worth it as when you can conjure 8 spirits.

I don't give anything AP vs ITNW, unless they're allergic to it.

[Dakka Dakka]

I don't give anything AP vs ITNW, unless they're allergic to it.

But if they are allergic to it, the allergen removes the quasi-armor altogether in addition to the +4 DV and continual damage, right? I think this unnecessarily screws with fire and water spirits as no other spirits have any allergies. I'm not aware of any other critters with ItNW and allergies. I would just summon spirits of air and man then. They have the cooler powers anyways.

I don't know if you get the desired results with your houserules. On the one hand you reduce the maximum number of spirits a character can have at the same time, on the other hand you make the spirits he does get more powerful.

[Sid Nitzerglobin]

Just curious, if you eliminate SnS for everything but shotguns do you also axe the SA wireless tasers?

[Tanegar]

Then, we have a Look What's In This Pocket houserule: a runner is capable of spending one point of Edge normally to pull out of his pocket any piece of gear that could fit into it, and that costs no more than 500Y with no more than 12 in Availability. It's a rule that's meant to represent the difference between the character competence and player one: while the player might forget to buy a thermite bar, his Int 8 Infiltration 6 shadow is highly unlikely to make such an amateur mistake.

That's actually quite nifty. Can the item be Restricted or Forbidden, or is it straight Availability 12? Regardless, yoink!

Similarly, runners are supposed to be spending time training between their stated activities, so there's no training time for skills.

I also do this, albeit simply because, IMO, training time adds nothing to the game beyond another layer of bookkeeping that I don't want to bother with.

[Thanee]

Character Generation: (for starting out a little lower)

All official SR4A books / e-publications can be used, though I reserve the right to veto certain items or combinations (probably won't happen, unless you are looking at truly outrageous stuff).

Characters will be built using the Karma Generation system from Runner's Companion (SR4A version, i.e. raising Attributes costs new Rating x5, Metatypes cost the BP cost in Karma, etc) with the standard 750 Karma.

In addition to the official rules, the following changes apply:

- The limit for how much Karma can be spent on Attributes (375 plus twice the Metatype BP cost) only applies to Physical and Mental Attributes; Special Attributes (i.e. Edge or Magic) can also be raised with the remaining Karma
- You get additional Knowledge Points equal to Intuition+Logic times 3 to spend on Knowledge Skills (just like with the BP system, one Rank costs one Knowledge Point)
- You also get additional Contact Points equal to Charisma times 3 to spend on Contacts (one point of Connection Rating or Loyalty costs one Contact Point)
- You can break up a Skill Group during character generation, when raising one of the skills further, or adding a specialization. You can never re-merge the Skill Group, however.

And the following limitations apply during character generation:

- Metatypes are limited to the standard Metatypes from the SR4A book and the Metavariants of these from Runner's Companion (no AIs, Changelings, Drakes, Infected, Shapeshifters, etc)
- No Technomancers
- No Possession traditions
- Only two Attributes (Physical or Mental) may be raised as much as four times each (i.e. max 5 for a human), all other Attributes (including all Special Attributes) can only be raised three times each
- Only one Skill can be raised to 5 OR two Skills can be raised to 4. All other Skills (including all Skill Groups) are limited to 3 during character generation.
- Knowledge Skills have the standard limit, i.e. one at 6 or two at 5, and the rest at 4 max.
- All equipment is limited to Availability 8 during character generation (or AV 12 with the Restricted Gear quality); the only exception to this are Fake SINs and Licenses, which have the normal limit of Availability 12
- Contacts are limited to Ratings of 3, both for Connection and Loyalty, but with a good enough explanation higher Ratings might be accepted (though anything above 4 is unlikely at best)

House Rules:

In addition to normal Karma rewards, you also gain 50% extra Karma, which is limited to learning/improving Knowledge Skills and gaining new Contacts or (with GM's discretion) improving the Loyalty of old ones (within reason; the cost for improving Contacts is the same as for acquring them during character generation, when using Karma) during downtime (you can still gain new Contacts during play, of course).

Knowledge Skills will sometimes be used as a Teamwork Test, granting bonus dice for the actual test. This, generally, does not apply to Combat and Magic Skills, though. But it could be used in a shadowing or a car chase, when you know the area very well, or if you have specific knowledge about maglocks, it might help when trying to disable them. Knowing much about fine cuisine could help with the higher class etiquette.

Pretty much anything, cyberware, bioware, foci, etc, can be improved in Rating during the game, by paying the difference in cost (AV for the "upgrade" is the AV of the higher Rating). You do not have to replace the items completely.

Indirect Combat Spells have their Drain Value reduced by 1. Indirect Elemental Combat Spells have their Drain Value reduced by an additional 1 (total 2).

Overcasting is a lot harsher than normal. The portion of the Force that goes beyond the Magic Rating is not halved (i.e. when you have Magic 3 and cast a Force 6 spell, the F/2 part of the Drain would be 4 (1 for the 3 points up to your Magic Rating and 3 more for the 3 points beyond). You can use the following formula to calculate Drain when overcasting: Force - Magic/2 (round up).

Physical Drain is resisted twice (with the exact same Dice Pool; i.e. if you spend Edge before the roll, you can use the extra dice for both rolls), once dealing physical damage and once dealing stun damage.

Summoning is generally limited to Force Ratings no higher than the summoner's Magic Rating.

Watchers can use the Magic Rating of their summoner, when using the Search Power.

Emotitoys are toys and useless for runners. Emotion Sensor Software is useful, however, but instead of giving its Rating as a dice pool modifier it is used as a Teamwork Test using its Rating (and granting bonus dice equal to the number of hits, limited to the Skill Rating of the skill being used).

The Adrenal Pump increases Attributes beyond the augmented maximum (up to twice the natural maximum). The Drain can be resisted with Body+Willpower.

Contacts can only acquire gear with an Availability as high as 4 times their Connection Rating. This limit applies, if you use your own Negotiation Skill or let the Contact use his or hers.

Contacts usually have an area of specialty (especially Fixers; weapons dealer, electronics fence, etc; the area of specialty should be reasonably specific). When using this specialty, they count their Connection Rating as one point higher than normal.

Bye
Thanee

[Fatum]

Why do you have this stipulation? Does it make it more balanced?

Well otherwise an adept would be able to get two Power Points from one initiation...

That's actually quite nifty. Can the item be Restricted or Forbidden, or is it straight Availability 12? Regardless, yoink!

Well, yeah - while restriction level is supposed to be important, it rarely comes up in our games, so both R and F, too.

I also do this, albeit simply because, IMO, training time adds nothing to the game beyond another layer of bookkeeping that I don't want to bother with.

From the mechanical standpoint, that's the reason for the rule. From the fluff standpoint, there's a justification: when the hacker's spending several hours in a data search, the rest of the team usually has free time on their hands anyway.

[Draco18s]

Well otherwise an adept would be able to get two Power Points from one initiation...

Adept initiates and grabs metamagic. Magic attribute boosted for free.
Net result: special power and 1 power point.

Adept initiates and grabs power point. Magic attribute not raised for free.
Net result: 1 power point.

(That seems totally fair. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/indifferent.gif) )

It can easily be remedied by not raising magic for free on initiation (look at the cost, magic 4 normally costs 20 karma, first initiation? 11. None of your players are going to spend karma on raising their magic, as it will always be more expensive that initiating, and every time they initiate, that gap grows wider (initiation goes up by 3 every time, magic goes up by 5)).

[Tanegar]

Adept initiates and grabs metamagic. Magic attribute boosted for free.
Net result: special power and 1 power point.

Adept initiates and grabs power point. Magic attribute not raised for free.
Net result: 1 power point.

(That seems totally fair. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/indifferent.gif) )

It can easily be remedied by not raising magic for free on initiation (look at the cost, magic 4 normally costs 20 karma, first initiation? 11. None of your players are going to spend karma on raising their magic, as it will always be more expensive that initiating, and every time they initiate, that gap grows wider (initiation goes up by 3 every time, magic goes up by 5)).

I'm confused. Where did Fatum say initiation includes a free point of Magic?

[Draco18s]

I'm confused. Where did Fatum say initiation includes a free point of Magic?

Whoops, I misread what his houserule was. No maximum magic.

[Nath]

Characters involved in social interactions can make a Composure Test whenever they want to. Each success remove one dice from any modifier their interlocutor may receive from Kinesics, Empathy Software or situation.

No table for range modifier, it is whatever the GM says it is. Rules of thumbs is, -1/10 meters for pistols, SMG and shotguns, -1/40 meters for assault rifles and LMG, -1/50 meters for HMG, -1/60 meters for hunting and precision rifles and assault canons, divided by 2 if shouldered, 4 if using bipod or tripod.

Random bullets and suppressive fire deal base weapon DV + ammo modifier + 1D6, so that innocent bystanders can get killed sometimes.

Explosions that hit "a vulnerable portion of a target" (they often do) receive the same +4 to DV than a Called Shot would.

Net hits does not add to stun baton, shock gloves, tasers and SNS damage. If the attacker achieves two net hits, and number of boxes taken exceeds Body, the target is knocked down and incapacitated for a number of turns equals to the number of boxes. The number of boxes taken from multiple electrical attacks in a turn and the previous one adds up for both comparison to Body and how long the effect lasts. So it may take more than a shot to get a troll down, but he will get down!
Small caliber SNS probably exist, but my players have yet to see some. Common as shotgun rounds.

Signal decreases with distance. Effective Signal is base Signal minus the Signal needed at that range : ie, full Signal between 0 and 3 meters, -1 between 3 and 40 meters, -2 between 40 and 100 meters, and so on... Effective Signal is used when comparing for Jaming effects.

Skillsofts and Autosofts can be bought with one Specialization for +1,000¥.

Availability for Mind Probe Formulae is not 4R. Try 24F instead. Each spell has a separate Availability code.

[CanRay]

My Houserule Cannon is a 155mm Smoothbore that's used by Lofwyr for skeet shooting.

...

What?

[Tanegar]

My Houserule Cannon is a 155mm Smoothbore that's used by Lofwyr for skeet shooting.

...

What?

How big are the clay pigeons?

[CanRay]

How big are the clay pigeons?

Buicks. A bit of a "Frag You" to Ares. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Tanegar]

Does he wield the cannon himself, or is it mounted on a vehicle and/or fixed emplacement?

[Draco18s]

Does he wield the cannon himself, or is it mounted on a vehicle and/or fixed emplacement?

The cooler option, obviously. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

[ShadowDragon8685]

Buicks. A bit of a "Frag You" to Ares. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

That's okay. Damien Knight plays Darts with BMWs.

[Draco18s]

That's okay. Damien Knight plays Darts with BMWs.

The things you can do with oodles of money.

[CanRay]

"What the hell are they gambling at there?" "Oh, that's the AAA-Level Pub Games. So far, Lofwyr is head with five Buicks on six launches, while Damien Knight is at 155 Points with BMWs on the dart board." "And Buttercup juggling Nissans?" "Oh, she's just showing off."