House Rules
13 March 2016 at 8:56pm
On my next run-through, I'm going to try adding a couple of "House Rules."
First, if you have multiple items with the same Combat (or Speed) Ability, you can use that ability as many times as it appears in your items. So, if you have two items with Piercing, you can use Piercing twice during a single combat. You can still only use one Combat/Speed ability at a time (so if you had two items with Rake, you couldn't Rake an opponent for 6d6 damage, but you could potentially use Rake twice, one for each items).
Secondly, dying has an extra cost. If you die, you must either lose one Equipment Item (not gold, quest items or Backpack items) or 5 Permanent health (if you have no Items or simply don't want to lose one that you have.
While I appreciate the idea that you don't have to restart the book from the beginning if your character dies, the idea of having infinite lives/chances kind of sucks the tension out of the adventure for me.
As for the other rule, I like the idea that if you want to acquire multiple uses of a certain ability, you don't necessarily have to go on a synonym hunt. That said, there's still some tactical thought involved. If you somehow have five items with Piercing and you're up against an opponent that's immune to Piercing, that's five item slots that are reduced in effectiveness. And death hurts more now.