Nyambe: Heart of Evil

House Rules

Variant Rules

1. Instant Kill (p. 64). When you roll a natural "20" on a roll, you check for a critical hit as normal. If you roll a "20" on your threat check, there is a chance of an instant kill. Roll a third time, and if you score a successful hit the target is instantly slain. Creatures immune to critical hits are also immune to Instant Kill.
2. Clobbered (p. 66). If you take more than 1/2 your current HP in one attack you are considered Clobbered. For your next action you may take only one Partial Action.
3. Skills with different abilities (p. 91). Skills may sometimes be paired with abilities other than their normal ability.
4. Critical success or failure (p. 92). Skill rolls suffer from critical success and failure chance just like combat.
5. Spell roll (p. 96). When a spellcaster casts a spell the DC of the saving throw is determined by rolling 1d20 and adding the spell level and the appropriate spellcasting ability modifier.

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Character Creation

I will be using "Organic Character" generation variant from the Dungeonmaster's Guide.

• STEP 1: roll 4d6, discarding the lowest, and apply them, in order, to your characteristics.
• STEP 2: you may reroll any single 4d6 set, replacing the original roll if the new roll is higher.
• STEP 3: swap the values of any two characteristics
• STEP 4: you may reroll the entire character, starting from step 1, if the total characteristics modifiers are +3 or below, or if the character has no characteristics of 12 or better.

This method allows for some choice, but doesn't allow the player to have all of his or her ability scores exactly where he or she wants them. A character may have to learn to cope with unwanted clumsiness (just like real life) or may have a personal talent unusual for his or her class (such as high strength for a magic user).

Characters get rolled up under GM supervision. No exceptions.

I would prefer no evil aligned characters, but if you must, you must. If you are going to be evil then you can be Lawful Evil ONLY. And by the way your basic character is going to be open to public scrutiny, so if you are evil everyone will know.

Because of the locale of the campaign (which will be set within the b'Ida rainforest near Wakyambe-land) some of the races and cultures of Nyambe are going to be more common than others. I'm not going to forbid anyone from playing the sort of character that they want (except for that evil part - I draw the line at that evil part) but if you are going to play a character from a culture not normally found in the b'Ida I would like some sort of explanation of what you are doing so far from home.

Again, this stuff won't make much sense until you read the information on Nyambe - keep it at hand and come back to it later.

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Advanced Feats (Tentative)

There is a House Rule that I have been toying with relating to feats because I want to make the various societies that are so much a part of Nyambe culture a stronger part of the campaign.  Here's what I have come up with so far (this is still tentative):

Any feat that has another feat as a prerequisite (for example "Cleave" which has "Power Attack" as a prereq) can only be learned by someone who is a member of one of Nyambe's societies (such as one of the Warrior Societies, for example).  You also cannot become any of the Prestige classes unless you are a member of the appropriate society.  Membership in a Society has to be roleplayed out, you don't just "get" it.

For now I wouldn't even qualify this as a House Rule, more an idea for a House Rule, but that's as far as I have gotten to date.

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