House Rules

[Chris]

Hi,

Mark and I have discussed house rules for 7th Sea for quite a while. I instituted a few during my "prologue," and Adam seems to be using at least a couple of them. 7th sea is a great game with one of the best mechanics of any game I've played, but it is far form flawless. It has some glaring problems, although I would not call them imbalances, and they are difficult to solve with a little tweak of a number or two. Some of them involve potentially rewriting fundamental aspects of combat and other mechanics, which we tried to avoid. I think we found fair compromises that preseve the game while fixing or working around some of the glaring problems.

Here are the house rules I have been using:

Universal Knacks: All the source material printed for 7th sea allows for countless character types, but everyone more or less has to buy certain skill headings to be functional in the game. Anyone who has played the game for more than a session or two will tell you: even your cloistered pacifist monk needs Athlete, Pugilist, or Acrobat. Yes, that Vodacce courtesan needs one of them, too. So does the Invisible College scientist. Seriously. Why? These are the only (Thean) skills that give you access to the Footwork knack. (There are a couple of Cathayan martial art skills that also grant it, but they are exotic and almost unjustifiable by non-Cathayan characters). So why is Footwork so important? According to the rules, your Passive Defense = 5 + (5 x Footwork). That means, if you do not have a skill that gives you access to Footwork, you are stuck at 5 PD unless you want to sacrifice Parry to be your PD, in which case you would almost never have an Active Defense option.
This is obnoxious to any character type that is not a fencer. Sure, a great deal fo the game is swashbuckling, but more of the game isn't than is, and it's unfair to make everyone buy the same skill even if it makes no sense for their character. Why would a bookish monk have athlete? Sure, he could, but if the player doesn't want him to, he shouldn't have to have it. Why would a courtesan have any of those skills (athlete, pugilism, or acrobat)? This is about avoiding making players buy skills they don't need.
Footwork, as I have it, still factors into Passive Defense (see below). The change here is that I have removed the need for characters to buy skills they don't need and can't justify.
There is one physical knack (Footwork), one mental knack (Perception; see below), and one social knack (Socialize) that I have set aside in one "Universal Skill" that everyone has on their character sheet. These skills start at 0, but any character can buy ranks in these knacks as though they had access to them in a normal skill. If a character does have Athlete (which, by the way, is still an elite skill) or any other skill that gives Footwork, the character gains a rank in Footwork as normal. The same is true for Socialize. The idea is just to let every character at least have access to three essential knacks, regardless of the skills they want to buy for their concept.

Passive Defense Fix: I never did like how Footwork calculated Passive Defense, though. Everyone always bought Athlete (or Acrobat or Pugilism) and bought Footwork up to 5 as soon as possible, usually at character creation. That gave everyone a 30 PD all the time. There is no curve, and since it was so easy to hit such a high PD, character with average Finesse (2) could rarely hit anything in combat. The fix means adjusting how PD is calculated to adjust the curve and make the average slightly lower so that everyone doesn't have to have above average finesse to be functional in combat.
The fix is as follows: Passive Defense = (Wits x 5) + (Footwork x 2). A different knack may be used in place of footwork, as appropriate, just as it always has been, but the calculation remains the same. This calculation lets non-combat-oriented characters have some shred of defense (so the bookworm doesn't have to nonsensically buy 5 Footwork like everyone else). There are two options, but omptimizing PD is a lot more expensive than it used to be. Getting to 30 used to cost 6 Hero Points. Now it costs that plus Wits 4, however you get there. The maximum is now even higher (35), but that requires Wits 5 and Footwork 5. The greatly increased cost lowers the functional average from 30 to about 17, so finesse 2 characters will be able to hit more than never.

Resolve as Perception: Wits was always a loaded trait. It is one of two mental traits, and resolve is  only rolled for sorcery and in reaction to things like poisons and mind-affecting things. Wits was the real mental trait. It was rolled by far more than any other trait, except for very social characters that used Panache quite a bit. I have attempted to balance this a bit, moving something away form Wits' workload and toward the underused Resolve.
Perception tests of any kind use Resolve instead of Wits by these house rules. The idea is that you need to concentrate to notice anything, which is more in the perview of Wits. This is just a rationalization, though, as the real reason here is to balance the use of the two traits. Perception tests are the most common, but definitely not the most important, rolls in any game I've played, so moving perception form Wits ot Resolve single-handedly balances the use of these traits nicely and without too much intrusion into how each fo them functions.

Resolve + Perception Knack: 7th Sea has several knacks that help characters go unnoticed, primarily Stealth and Unobtrusive. These typically use Finesse + Stealth or Panache + Unobtrusive. The problem is that there is no equal for these knacks to balance noticing with going unnoticed. The lack of a perception knack gives stealthy characters an unfair advantage for no good reason. So, the Perception knack is new (and in the Universal Skill described above) and may be invested in to balance against stealth.
As per all of these house rules, perception tests are Resolve + Perception, keep Resolve. Wits may still be used if the GM decides not to use the above house rule that switches perception form Wits ot Resolve.

Adam may want to post here to clarify which ones he is using and which ones he is not. If anyone has an questions or anything to suggest or add, feel free to post.

[Adam]

I like the balance justifications for the rule changes, so we'll stick to them.

The passive defense change is an interesting switch: it makes for lower passive defenses, but allows less combat-oriented characters to at least participate. With lower passive defenses for yourselves and your enemies (an average enemy will have 2-3 wits and 3-4 footwork, therefore a defense between 14 and 23) combat may turn a smidge towards the fast and brutal side, as the lowered TNs to hit will allow the more skilled combat characters to take more raises and do more damage. This makes for an interesting twist, as the skilled combat characters will play a game of big hits and active defense (and allow people to take raises on their active defense - keep reading for why you might take raises when your life is on the line), while the less skilled characters will still get chances for piling on flesh wounds (and sometimes for being the straw that breaks the camel's back).

The only rule above that I'm not sure of is rolling Resolve instead of Wits for perception. I agree that the balance between Wits and Resolve can get skewed in Wits' favor, but I won't let Resolve go down without a fight. I like the way the GM Guide explains the importance of Resolve: "Resolve is the great equalizer, the one Trait that almost everyone overlooks... except the last man standing of course." If your characters are tired, they'll roll Resolve to pay attention. If your characters are beaten, they'll roll Resolve to keep going. If your characters are frustrated or exhausted or bored, they'll roll Resolve. I will probably swap Resolve out for every other trait at some point in the game. If a fight goes on too long, Resolve will replace Finesse. If you're carrying something for an extended period of time, Resolve will replace Brawn. If you've been fraternizing with noxious nobles at court for a few hours, Resolve might even replace Panache. And if you have any reason for your attention to wander, Resolve will replace Wits on perception checks.

The other house rule I'd like to add to the above is that I want you guys to outwit your opponents in combat. We've got near limitless freedom in this medium, so if you've got a specific action you want to do in combat, say it. The best thing about this system is that there is a skill for nearly anything, but I don't want you to feel limited to just the skills you have. If you want to take raises on an active defense, for example, you might be able to end a parry with your sword at your enemy's throat (a classic shwashbuckling maneuver if ever there was one), or tip your opponent off-balance. If you want to pull a feint without the Feint skill, you could roll Finesse + Attack (taking raises equal to their Wits as per the Feint skill). If successful, you may deny them an opportunity to actively defend.

Of course, when there is a skill for an action that you want to take, we'll want to make sure that there's still a reason for taking the skill, so we don't upset the balance. Unskilled or impromptu versions of certain actions will always be less powerful than their skilled counterparts, or will come with more significant penalties. The above unskilled feint example would probably require an extra raise or two beyond their Wits and/or come at a penalty of one kept die to the total damage (as shifting your weight for the fake attack takes momentum away from the real).

We'll come up with rules for other possibilities as you present them. The important thing is to think outside the box. If you're character's got Dirty Fighting, explain how dirty you're going to be, and maybe you'll get bonuses to it. If you want to bind a weapon and then call a shot on the person's hand, we can do that. If you want to kick dirt in your enemy's face so that your friends can take him down, do it. The more clever the idea and the more timely its implementation, the more likely you'll get a drama die for it.

Thanks for the above write-up, Chris.

[Chris]

Hi,

I'm going to stick with the above house rules that Adam has been using in his game. I especially like his situational use of both Wits and Resolve for perception checks. I'll keep that and stick with the modified Passive Defense and Universal Knack rules.

I am going to revert back to normal Reputation for my game, though. It's not a big shift, but it is a bit simpler. Basically, Glamour Mages and characters big on Repartee won't have to worry about which type of Reputation you can use when. It'll all be in one category, as per the core book. I've used both the basic rules and the advanced rules from Noblisse Obligee (which Adam has been using), and I like the advanced rules a bit but I find that they don't really bring enough to the Repartee system to justify their trouble. This shouldn't be a big deal.

I would also like to clarify some other, more minor, house rules that I typically use and that have been addressed in Adam's game. I use different knacks for passive and active defense. The book says you have to use the same knack for active defense that you are using for passive defense, but that always seems to illogical and broken that it seemed like a misprint. So, you can use any appropriate knack but the one you are using for passive defense to actively defend. This is the way we have been doing it in Adam's game, so this shouldn't change. It just allows for way more tactical options than what the core book lets you do (not to mention it makes way more sense).

I'll post more of my house rules as I think of them. For now, though, count on basically the same stuff Adam has been using, with the exception of Reputation.

Ben might want to clarify whether or not he is using house rules, and which ones he is using. I'll let him do that on his own here.