Not really what you asked, but preparing and improvising aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.
IE, you can prep some encounters, rooms, vilains etc, but mostly on the surface, they don’t have to be predetermined as, for example, goblins in a cave, or the villain can be anyone or even better, you just improvise him towards the end, for a huge plot twist in your players mind, while you just picked what happened to fit the best at the time combined with what you prepared.
Adapting/reusing on the go what you prepared/envisioned is, imo, one of the best skills a DM can have and work on. And this applies for things you prepared in a previous session but happened to not use at the time.
On a 5-foot grid, you can move two squares diagonally for 15 feet of movement, i.e. sqrt(2) = 1.5.
When there’s an ambush, the ambushee with the highest initiative repeatedly rolls initiative against a DC based on how good the ambush was, while the ambushers just take turns in whatever order they want. When the ambushee beats the roll, we set up a normal initiative order. Also, initiative is decoupled from dexterity – being good at turning cartwheels or picking pockets doesn’t mean you won’t freeze up in combat. Initiative is its own stat.
It depends on how tightly the system is designed. Pathfinder 2e players consider it blasphemy to houserule the way 5e players do, but the system is extremely well balanced so houserules aren’t really needed. In 5e there are so many holes in the system that basically every DM has to fill in the gaps to some extent.
As a PF2 player, we don’t consider it blasphemy, it’s just something that needs to be done carefully to avoid breaking things.
Plus, there is a clear pattern of people coming over from 5e, adding a bunch of houserules in their first playthrough, then complaining when things are broken. That behavior unfairly makes the system look bad.
Yeah maybe not “blasphemy”. It can absolutely be done well, but the mindset of houseruling in 2e is very different from the mindset of 5e houseruling. Like in 5e, the thing going through your head when you houserule is “the 5e rules don’t cover this situation appropriately so I need to try and come up with something that feels fair and in the spirit of the system design” whereas in 2e the system feels far more complete and has fewer holes.
Our group views TTRPGs as a way to experience a story or world. I know some people like to minmax or love rules and that’s great. But for us, while all worlds have rules, if the rules don’t lend themselves toward fun or progressing the story in a manner that makes sense, then I either adjust, change or don’t enforce them. I also will mix and match rules from different systems that I’ve enjoyed.
As for what rules, you already mentioned a few. We also utilize potions as a bonus action, but I don’t limit them. I do this because they like boss fights that include big hits and having the capability to heal helps ensure I’m not unfair during a fight.
We also utilize a karma system. I give out karma during sessions for excellent role play, ingenuity, making everyone laugh and for birthdays etc. They can then use this karma to buy certain enhancements from a genie prior to encounters. Enhancements include different things such as adding +1 to a die roll, rerolling, rolling with advantage, or even a long rest (super expensive). This has helped keep people engaged and gives some combat helpers that minimizes the impact when they are on a negative rolling streak.
undefined> too many set house rules, but I do make rule calls on the fly that don’t necessarily follow the handbooks, as I’m sure many DMs do. I am always aiming for rule of cool, and good for the story calls. In the end, we are here to have fun. If I make a call that gives the party an unintended advantage of a step up in some way, be damn sure I’ll make sure that gets balanced out somehow…
We’ve always played that healing potions can be consumed in a bonus action or an action to use one on an unconscious player.
I adapted the ‘Icon Relationships’ in 13th Age to be more like your Karma rule. It plays a little more FATE like. They get points, they spend points. Lets them get out of a touch scrape while giving them some agency
13th age does this. Choose 3 or 4 out of a total pool of X per class. Helps it so no 2 chars of the same class are samey, gives players agency in builds... I love it and it seems a lot mor exciting than a subclass based system like in dnd.
I also feel the talents in 13a are mooostly balanced with each other, but I haven't played it long enough to guarantee this
WFRP (Warhammer Fantasy role play) has a fun system where there are lots of careers, but those careers have talent options. Each talent isn’t limited to one career so there is overlap but the combination of talents and skills is what makes the careers unique.
This was probably one of my favorite systems when it comes to just a giant list of potential skills. The way they’re grouped by level and just the crunch of leveling was fun.
Sounds a bit like the Archetype system in Pathfinder 2e. A lot of the customization of your character comes from archetypes, not class features. The nice thing is that most archetypes can be taken by any class, so you can use the “Archer” archetype as a fighter, ranger, rogue, or even as a wizard (though there might be some antisynergy there)
Wow, I used to play Arctic MUD back in university. It’s still around from the looks of it! (Was based on ‘diku mud’ if I recall… why do I retain such trivia?) mud.arctic.org
Mudding! Wow. Oh man, that's some memories.... scrapes the dust off brain I'm still a wizard/programmer on one that I check in on every few years, maybe fix a bug. Hope to have more time to tinker ...someday!
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