Belswick house rules: lighten up already

After nine months and thirteen sessions in Belswick, I'm making some changes to my house rules. Rules overview first, motivation below that. In general, I'm ditching stuff that was a chore to track or that felt like a penalty to the players, and keeping the rules that add to the story.

Update: added in my inventory rule. Accreting house rules via blog posts is merry hell when you want a clear overview...

Inventory and encumbrance

Unchanged: you can carry a number of items equal to your strength score without penalty, anything over and you get penalties. Exceptionally small or large items (potion vials, armors, two-handed swords) take up less/more than 1 slot. 

XP for GP

Will shift to milestone leveling: the group levels up when the DM thinks it's appropriate (mostly after an adventure arc).

Buying status, land and property

Unchanged: you can use your wealth to buy a title, land and property, or outfit a shrine, lab or library.

Shrines and libraries for spellcasters add extra spells on top of what you're already getting for free when you level (see under spellcasters below). Labs add potion recipes, which are about the only magic item you can make yourself.

Carousing

Doesn't work with milestone leveling and hasn't been used yet. Throw it out. Use the carousing table for big parties or freaky rites when you want a favor from people.

Magic shops

They exist, just not out in every little hamlet. Even out in the wild, there's enough rando wizards, clerics and nobles that you can trade or buy an item if you want to.

Magic item prices

Will keep using the optional price range in DMG p135. Potion prices remain in effect.

• common: 50-100 gp
• uncommon: 101-500 gp
• rare: 501-5000 gp
• very rare: 5001-50,000 gp
• legendary: 50,001 gp

Taxes

Nobles still collect taxes, but I'm not going to bother the PCs with them anymore. We're not playing Dread Accountants of Mordor here. I'll assume that players dutifully pay taxes to their lord and tithes to the Church, and that any treasure they find already has taxes deducted.

Tax evasion

If you want to dodge your taxes, you can add 10-80% to any value found. However, this is also the chance that you draw the tax collector's attention, who will take the entire value you were trying to keep out of their sight.

Healing, resting and Death & Dismemberment

Unchanged. Death and Dismemberment stays in effect. Short and long rests stay as follows:

• Long rest: 8h comfortable rest and 1 ration to heal up to half your hit point maximum and a level of exhaustion.
• Short rest: either 15m and 1/2 ration for d4 hp, or 1hr and 1/2 ration for d6+level hp (1/day only).

Races

As in the player handbook. Ability bonuses add to the ability instead of giving a reroll, cantrips work an unlimited times per day, darkvision allows dim perception in utter darkness.

Existing characters

You can now add the benefits of your subrace. Humans and animal folk add 3 ability points to 3 different abilities: don't add these to your two highest stats (I assume you already boosted those at character generation).

Classes

All classes now available, including formerly prohibited ones like monk, paladin and sorcerer.

Subclasses/archetypes/feats now available without finding a mentor. Of course you can always work with a mentor for flavor.

Spellcasters

As in the player handbook, including each class's rules on (not) needing a spellbook.

Cantrips now function as such from level 1 instead of taking a spell slot to power.

Clerics

Revert to standard rules (d8 hit dice, armor proficiencies, spellcasting). You still need to be a member of a holy order.

Wizards

Wizards stay bound to their wizarding college via their debt. Learning spells in addition to those you gain for free still costs time and money: (50 gp+2 hours)/spell level, but you no longer need to check Arcana to successfully learn a spell. Wizard spells still only run up to level 6 (higher level spells prohibited and suppressed by the Church of the Authority).

Warlockry

Unchanged: do favors for your patron in return for quick power.

WHY I'M MAKING THESE CHANGES

XP for GP and taxes

This one started to creak pretty fast. I like the idea of nudging the players to explore and loot in order to level, I really do. It also meant that if I wanted them to be able to level regularly, I needed to add heaps of gold and other treasure to the adventures. Even with taxes, it was a bit ludicrous that common farmers brought home a couple of coppers, low nobles were scrounging for 12 gp per month, and the party was pulling hundreds of gold pieces from the ground in a starter dungeon.

I soon started to add favours and blackmail material that had a certain monetary value, but still this just ended up being a lot of work to plan out. Common magic item prices being cheap-ish didn't help either. I could've overhauled those prizes as well, but where does it end? I'm looking for a comparatively easy game to plan and play, and loot planning was becoming a chore.

I might use monster XP as a guideline to stocking adventures, but that's more an aid to the DM than something the players need to track.

Buying status, land and property

Fun way to tie players to the world around them. It stays in!

Carousing

Doesn't work with milestone leveling and hasn't been used yet. Throw it out. Use the table for big parties or freaky rites when you want a favor from people.

No magic shops

I like that you can't just shop for legendary items in a random village, but magic shops are a cool way to add some flavor to the game. Still won't be like shopping at Walmart, more like having an expert craftsman who can throw something together for you.

The standard D&D rules have magic items as "priceless", i.e. no magic shops. I used the optional pricing rules because under my XP-for-GP rule, only actual value translates to XP, so I needed to find out how much that magic armor was worth.

Taxes

Still in effect, but behind the scenes. This is just easier on the DM.

Tax evasion

Instead of a deduction on value earned through hard dungeoneering, now you can choose to take a risk and earn a little something extra.

Healing, resting and Death & Dismemberment

Death and Dismemberment stays in effect. I find it hilarious and horrific, while not being more deadly than the standard "death save" rule. In fact, I think it may be less deadly. 

What's more, the Death & Dismemberment table is driving stories: our cleric/bard/warlock is now cursed after an infusion of negative energy and needs to find high magic or an angel's love to be cured. Cool stuff - I'm keeping this over the anemic "three death saves or you die" rule.

Races

As in the player handbook. I had tweaked this because I wanted stats to be lowish, darkness to be a real problem, magic rare and all that. After 12 sessions, I feel like giving the players a little boost.

Classes

Same as under races: I had reduced power levels across the board to make people earn their proper use of cantrips, etc etc. Now that I've gotten the hang of the system, I'm happy to restore all this to the regular rules.