House Rules

House Rules and Table Philosophy

Expectations, adjudication approach, and mechanical clarifications

Introduction

I believe in the rule of cool and I strongly encourage creative solutions to problems. Story comes first. The rules exist to provide structure, establish stakes, and create drama through uncertainty, not to limit creativity or clever play. My goal is to support imaginative play while maintaining tension, fairness, and narrative momentum.

Adjudication and Table Flow

Pacing matters to me, and minimizing disruptions matters to me. If a rules question arises during play, I will make a ruling in the moment so the game can continue. That ruling will stand for the remainder of the session.

Consistency is still important. After the session, we can discuss the ruling as a group and decide how we want to handle similar situations going forward. If a decision becomes a standing rule, it will be added to this rules sheet for reference.

Why These Rules Exist

The purpose of table rules is not restriction, but preservation of fun. Some abilities and interpretations can be unintentionally abused in ways that trivialize encounters, bypass tension, or drain challenge from the game. These clarifications exist to prevent that without diminishing the strength or identity of any class or playstyle.

As characters grow in power, challenges evolve as well. These rules are meant to support that growth while keeping encounters engaging, meaningful, and fair for everyone at the table.

Perception, Awareness, and Understanding

Perception represents awareness, alertness, and sensory input. It answers the question “Do you notice something?” It does not automatically answer “What is it?”, “How does it work?”, or “What does it mean?”

Passive Perception
Passive Perception reflects a character’s general attentiveness to their surroundings. It may alert a character that something is unusual or out of place, but it does not provide analysis, identification, or understanding.

Examples of what Passive Perception can reveal:

• Something about the environment feels wrong
• An object, pattern, or detail does not match its surroundings
• There is movement, disturbance, or an irregularity worth attention

Passive Perception does not automatically detect traps, identify tracks, or reveal hidden mechanisms. It serves as an early warning, not a solution.

Active Perception
An active Perception check represents deliberate observation. It improves the chance of noticing details, but still only determines that something is present, not its nature or function.

Noticing a detail does not imply understanding it.

Interpretation Requires Expertise
Once something is noticed, identifying or understanding it requires the appropriate skill.

• Investigation: Mechanical layouts, construction, pressure plates, hidden triggers
• Sleight of Hand: Fine mechanisms, wires, tension devices
• Arcana: Magical wards, runes, glyphs, spell effects
• Survival: Tracks, natural signs, animal or monster movement
• Nature: Natural hazards, environmental dangers
• Other skills as appropriate to the situation

A character may notice signs of something without knowing what they indicate or how to deal with them.

Design Intent
This approach preserves the value of specialized skills, prevents Passive Perception from functioning as a skeleton key to all problems, and encourages teamwork and expertise. Perception remains powerful, but it does not replace knowledge, training, or experience.

Passive Scores Are Not Always-On Powers

Passive scores represent baseline competence and awareness, not constant success or automatic solutions. They exist to keep the game moving and to indicate when something deserves attention.

Passive scores do not replace active decision making, skill use, or player engagement. They may reveal that something is present, but they do not resolve situations, bypass challenges, or negate the need for expertise.

Darkvision Clarification

Darkvision does not function as normal sight in darkness. It allows creatures to see in darkness as if it were dim light, which still limits clarity, detail, and color.

Darkvision does not eliminate shadows, concealment, or environmental uncertainty. Fine details may be missed, colors are muted or absent, and Perception checks may still be affected by lighting conditions. Darkness remains a meaningful environmental factor even for creatures with darkvision.

Hide and Stealth Clarification

Hide is a powerful tool and is meant to be impactful, but it is not invisibility. True invisibility exists in the game through spells, items, and abilities, and Hide should not replace or diminish those effects.

When adjudicating Hide, I consider the environment, line of sight, lighting, cover, and the intent of the action. Using Hide in combat to gain advantage on an attack represents momentary misdirection, blinding, or breaking visual focus, such as dipping behind cover, obscuring vision, or exploiting a brief opening. This is expected and encouraged, especially for rogues.

Hide cannot be used to fully disappear from aware combatants in a clear, well-lit space without meaningful cover or obscurity. Being small behind a larger creature may briefly break line of sight, but it does not make you unseen to all observers. If a creature can reasonably track your position, you are not hidden from it.

Social Skills Are Not Mind Control

Persuasion and Deception influence attitudes, beliefs, and decisions, but they do not override free will or fundamental nature. No roll can force a creature to act directly against its core motivations, loyalties, or self-preservation.

Successful social rolls may shift opinions, open possibilities, create hesitation, or improve outcomes, but the final response will always be shaped by the character, creature, and situation involved.

Athletics and Acrobatics Clarification

Athletics and Acrobatics are distinct skills and are not interchangeable. Athletics governs strength-based physical actions such as climbing, grappling, shoving, lifting, and resisting force. Acrobatics governs dexterity-based actions such as balance, tumbling, controlled movement, and precise body control.

Which skill applies depends on the action being described. The fiction of the action matters. A dexterous description does not turn a strength-based task into an Acrobatics check, and agility cannot replace raw force where force is required.