House Rules

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House Rules

House Rules are, by definition, created at the discretion of staff. Many HRs have been formed as workarounds to blend first edition Changeling: the Lost with the requirements of GMC, and many of these are already extant within the game itself via the news command, +psyroll and others.

In most cases, it is safe to assume that if something does not appear on this list or the GMC page, it operates per standard book rules.



GMC

As the game is a blend of two different publications, certain situations fall under one category or another. As the MUX is primarily a Changeling game, for example, the Changeling XP schema is used instead of Beats and Conditions. The vast majority of basic mortal mechanics ARE taken from GMC. Typically speaking, WoD rules are used where A) GMC streamlined out something staff thought was cool or B) where GMC just didn't have something at all.

See the GMC page for a comprehensive list of what is and is not derived from the God Machine Chronicles rulebook.

Swimming

Everyone swims at half of their normal Speed, rounded up. Swim Speed is calculated before applying any bonuses, penalties or other modifiers.

BOUNTY: Staff is all certain that we have read this rule in some book somewhere, but none of us have succeeded in finding it. Whoever is the first to submit a +request Swimming Bounty=<Book Name and Page Number> to staff will receive an award in tix, a badge and staff's gratitude and admiration.


Changeling

Clarity

NOTE TO STAFF: This (and thereby likely 'news clarity') needs to be updated to be consistent with the breaking point rules on the GMC page. Examples below refer to degradation/derangement rolls, but we've HRed those. We need better cross-referencing between the HR and GMC page wherever possible. Like here. Also, aim for concision. Might also be nice to move the list of Standard Breaking Points off to its own place (or the GMC page) where it can be consolidated for all spheres.

This information is also written in 'news clarity'

As is made very clear in the books, Clarity is not morality. Clarity is a measure of how well a changeling balances being caught between two worlds. Acts of capricious passion and violence are considered threatening to Clarity not because they are morally wrong, but because they harken back to the horrors and sublime egocentrism of the Keepers.


Changeling 2.0 isn't out yet (and we will not be switching to it), but GMC is, which means the old hierarchy of Clarity "sins" does not mesh with our mortal players.

To streamline Becomings and keep our game consistent, staff has decided on a compromise for Breaking Points.

The old "sins" will be kept as so-called "standard" Breaking Points. They still apply to every character, and apply penalties as per the chart below, depending on which level the break is for. (See news clarity sins)

The points you choose during chargen are in addition to these, to flesh out your character's personality.

You don't need to roll if: 

- Your Clarity is lower than a "standard" Breaking Point's former "sin" level.

You do need to roll if: 

- Your Clarity is equal to or higher than a "standard" BP's former "sin" level.
- You hit a personal Breaking Point. Your personal points are up to you (or your ST) to judge.


If you go through a Becoming, you will have a chance to edit your Breaking Points to reflect changes in what would still damage your psyche after your Keeper's tender mercies.

Plus or minus any situational modifiers, as with Integrity, rolling to preserve/lose Clarity after a Breaking Point will be a Resolve + Composure roll with a base bonus/penalty determined by your current Clarity. See the chart below. 

 10     9      8      7      6      5      4      3      2      1      0
  ======================================================================
 +3    +2     +2     +1     +1      0     -1     -1     -2     -2     -3

"Why, characters at Clarity 0 can't be played! Why have it on the scale?" you might ask. Fate's Harvest is designed for the end-game. If you want to end your character's PC story by becoming a True Fae, the books offer some lovely tips, and Clarity 0 WILL be a thing. Briefly. In your final moments of glory, before staff relegates you to NPC status.

(Note that this affects the Lucidity Contract, Changelings.)

Clarity Sins

The following is a list of the standard Changeling breaking points.

By nature of the bonuses and penalties involved in streamlining to better match GMC and mortal Integrity, Clarity rolls are somewhat more forgiving than they would be in standard CtL.

Add the modifier below to any rolls based on the listed breaking points at that level.

Clarity Sins - Standard Changeling Breaking Points
CLARITY MOD BREAKING POINTS
10 0 Entering the Hedge. Dreamwalking. Using magic to accomplish a task when it could be achieved just as well without. Minor unexpected life changes.
9 0 Using tokens or other mystical items. Going a day without human contact. Minor selfish acts.
8 0 Breaking mundane promises or commitments, especially to attend to faerie matters. Changing Courts. Injury to another (accidental or otherwise).
7 -1 Taking psychotropic drugs. Serious unexpected life changes. Petty theft.
6 -1 Revealing your true form to unensorcelled mortals. Going a week without human contact. Obvious displays of magic in front of witnesses. Grand theft (burglary).
5 -1 Killing another changeling. Killing a fetch.
4 -1 Breaking formal oaths or pledges. Extreme unexpected life changes (pregnancy, losing a loved one, etc.). Impassioned or impulsive serious crimes (manslaughter).
3 -2 Actively harming a mortal by ravaging their dreams. Going a month without human contact. Kidnapping. Developing a derangement.*
2 -2 Killing a human. Casual/callous crime against other supernaturals (serial murder).
1 -2 Spending time in Arcadia. Prolonged or intimate contact with the True Fae. Mortal identity is suddenly and unexpectedly destroyed, totally abandoned or otherwise fundamentally changed. Heinous acts of torture, depravity or perversion. 
* Does not include derangements brought on by failed Clarity degeneration rolls.

Examples

Example 1:

Damian the Darkling has Clarity 4.
He's having a fine old time in his sports car, and runs over a kid.
That's a standard Breaking Point. Manslaughter, especially of a kid, is not good.
But wait! Damian lost a son when he was Taken.
One of his personal Breaking Points is causing children to be harmed.
He decides that, to be fair, joyriding and carelessly killing a kid would deeply affect Damian's state of mind. It's just too much like what his Keeper used to do. He (or his ST) gives himself a -2 penalty on the roll.
Damian rolls: +roll resolve+composure-1-2 to a +job.
--> He is at -1 to start with because his Clarity is 4. He has slipped far enough already that it's harder for him to retain clarity than it would be for someone with higher clarity.
--> He has a -2 penalty because he chose to apply a second breaking point to the roll.
Note that if he hadn't chosen to apply the -2 Breaking Point, his penalty would have been -1, to reflect the level 4 "sin" of manslaughter.
In a case where a Clarity break could reflect multiple Breaking Points, always choose the option with the higher penalty.
If he passes, good, he's all set. He keeps his current Clarity level.
If he fails... he loses a Clarity level.
On top of that, he rolls his new Clarity as a dice pool to determine whether or not he acquires a derangement to go with it.

Example 2:

Lucinda the Beast has Clarity 7.
She's at a party, and does some very excellent drugs. What a trip!
...except it stops being great when she realizes her Keeper's realm was awfully similar...
This is a standard Breaking Point at level 7.
Lucinda rolls: +roll resolve+composure+1-1 to a +job.
--> She is at +1 to start with because her Clarity is 7.
--> She has a -1 penalty because that is the penalty for level 7 "sins."

Contracts

See Contracts for all allowed options, including custom Contracts.

Artifice 5: Cost to extend the duration is a "blessing" from a Token/Trinket/any other Hedge item + 1 Willpower.
Eternal Summer 5: Instead of subtracting full Defense, halve it and round down.
Eternal Winter 4: Instead of subtracting full Defense, use the higher of Wits or Dexterity.
Fleeting Spring 2: Exceptional success is no longer permanent. It lasts 2 days per success.
Fleeting Winter 3: Round up when determining the dice penalty to Social rolls.
Fleeting Winter 4: Exceptional success is no longer "until the changeling releases it" in perpetuity. It lasts 2 days per success. The changeling may release it at any point during that time period.
Four Directions 4: Exceptional success blessing is specifically the ability to sense the direction of an incursion (i.e. to know that it was in the "living room", but not "third window from the left of the bookshelf in the living room").
Lucidity: Reminder: Clarity rolls are house ruled here. See the "Clarity" and "Standard Breaking Points" House Rules for advice on how we have adapted the old system into the new.
Mirror 1: Clarification: The new appearance chosen may be a blend of kiths to represent someone with Dual Kith/Wyrd Evolution. Have fun!
Separation 5: You are NOT invisible. You are intangible. You can say you look misty or like a ghost, but you are still _visibly_ there.

Court Titles and Positions

House rules and policies pertaining to the titles and positions a changeling can hold within their court can be found at House Rules/Court Titles and Positions.

Glamour

For the most part, Glamour works as in the standard CtL harvesting rules. In addition, Fate's Harvest has adopted/adapted the following, inspired by optional rulings from Rites of Spring:

  • Just as you feel weak or ill or light-headed from lack of food or drink, having a low Glamour reserve is not a pleasant feeling. Staying tip-top full is as satisfying as eating a hearty meal.
  • You may voluntarily gift 1 point of Glamour per turn (3s) to any target you can touch. If you are in a noncorporeal form, that doesn't count as touching. I'm looking at you, swirls of leaves and Separation-users.

If you would like to drain and attack others, please check out the Glamour Thief merit.

Hedgespun

See the Hedgespinning page for our House Rules regarding Hedgespun items.

High Wyrd

See the High Wyrd page for a synopsis of what it means to be High Wyrd on Fate's Harvest. High Wyrd blessings for each kith are listed on the main Kiths page as well as the individual category page for each kith. Most of these High Wyrd blessings are house ruled and will be noted as such.

Seemings

Every Seeming has a specific set of blessings and curses which begin to affect you as of Wyrd 7 and get progressively more potent the higher your Wyrd gets. Each Seeming's blessings and curses, including those granted by High Wyrd, are listed on their individual Seeming category page. Those which are house ruled are noted below. See Equinox Road, starting on page 15, for the chapter which describes them.

Beast

  • Wyrd 7 Blessing: Instead of an additional Animal Ken specialty, the spend a glamour to gain a die bonus is extended to Survival dice pools.
  • Wyrd 8 Blessing: As such, the improvement to the spend a glamour gain two dice bonus is extended to include Survival dice pools.
  • Wyrd 9 Blessing: Choose a free specialty in either Animal Ken (original) or Survival (new).

Fairest

  • Wyrd 9 Blessing: Instead of halving all XP costs for Social Merit purchases, gain a single free dot in one of the following merits: Allies, Contacts, Fame, Retainer, Staff or Striking Looks; this dot will add to any existing owned dots but cannot bring a merit above its standard cap.
Example: If a fairest owns Striking Looks •, this dot can be used to bring it to Striking Looks ••, but a fairest with Striking Looks •• could not use this dot to exceed that merit's cap and gain Striking Looks •••.

Iron

Iron and its purity are controversial topics, and given that even when it was more popular, smiths were more concerned with the work than the science, exactitudes of purity are not going to be our benchmark for whether your weapon or the paperweight you desperately grab counts as cold iron.

  • For the purposes of this game, if an item has high iron content (such as steel) it disgusts the Fae and wards them off; its presence is uncomfortable, but not yet painful. It has no inherent magical effect upon Fae defenses and Contracts.
  • If an item is usually called "iron", such as a wrought iron fence or a cast iron skillet, it will cut through the Fae's defenses like butter...and yours, Changelings. It's always wise to have armour around which won't act like tissue paper against somebody with an iron sword. It does no additional damage. The True Fae find this iron physically painful to be near, and touching it feels like burning, as though the implement were hot out of the forge. If you want your torture implements, you've got them right here.
  • If an item was hand-shaped without heat, with nothing but muscle power, out of meteoric iron, it is "hand-forged iron" and in addition to cutting through Fae defenses, it is both LUDICROUSLY rare and expensive, and also does Aggravated damage against the True Fae when used to attack them.

Kiths

Almost every single kith is house ruled and should be considered custom content, specific to Fate's Harvest. While the books are still the best reference for thematic flavor for most of the kiths, the books should not be relied upon for mechanics. The mechanics listed on the wiki and within the +kith command should always be favored over what is in the books. Please refer to Kiths for an overview of the mechanics for all kiths and to each individual kith category page for detailed information and rule clarifications pertaining to those mechanics. Custom kiths have theme write-ups on their category pages.

If any of the rules seem unclear or the documentation is inconsistent, please file a +request with staff so that we may fix the issue.

Mien Guidelines

See the Mien Guidelines page.

Tokens

Our token-making rules are based on the writeup for the Token Maker merit on RoS p.150. We have adjusted them to allow for somewhat shorter creation times.

True Fae

  • Please see the True Fae page for staff's stance on portraying or becoming True Fae in this game.

If you are looking for a list of staff- and player-created Keepers to choose from, please check the Gentry page.

Wyrd Evolution

When you hit Wyrd 5 and, later, Wyrd 9, you have the option to gain another kith (for 10xp and 15xp, respectively).

For an example showing the absolute maximum number of kiths you could possibly have:
  1. You start out as a Fireheart.
  2. You decide to purchase the Dual Kith merit after you've been playing for a while, since you've decided your character was used as an ornament by your Keeper, and add the Treasured kith.
  3. At Wyrd 5, you evolve to Bright One, because you reason that your character's flames have been getting stronger, so it makes sense that you would have evolved to be able to illuminate your surroundings at will.
  4. Then you join the Pilgrims of the Endless Road, and while you have a Wits advantage from Fireheart, you're better at resisting things from Treasured and you can glow from Bright One, you don't really have any social bonuses. You decide to take Flamesiren as the benefit for that Entitlement, since it helps fill in an area your other kiths don't cover yet.
  5. Lastly, you've been playing for a while, and you'd like to try another character. You decide to go for Wyrd 9, and take the evo there. After giving it some thought, you decide to take the Darkling kith Mirrorskin, to reflect how mutable and fickle your character's grasp on his appearance has become.

As you can see, the Wyrd evolution did not happen at random. The kiths chosen reflect CURRENT character traits, but the player wants to bring them out and get mechanical benefits for them. If you are constantly doing grunt work, you are likely to evolve into kiths which help you do grunt work better, but you are not likely to become a glass ballerina.

Once you decide you want to go for Wyrd evolution, start playing it up. You're changing in minor ways before the PRP happens and finalizes everything. If you're already an Ogre and you're going for a Beast kith to be more boar-like, maybe you start noticing that your beard keeps growing back faster, that your hair is getting bristlier on your arms, stiffer, in the months leading up to the change.


Merits

See House_Rules/Merits for the full list of house rules pertaining to merits, including custom merits.

If a merit on the Merits list has (HR) after its name, it was created for Fate's Harvest, and is not found in any book.


Equipment

  • Polearms: Despite the Strength requirement in the books being 4, it makes no sense for these weapons to require Strength 4 to wield. Instead, they are House Ruled to have a requirement of Strength 2.


Traps

The rules for traps and trap-making are located in the Armory books. They are minimal, and not built for GMC. Not even our GMC-lite.

Please use the mechanics below for any traps you or your character may intend to create. For examples of pre-approved mechanics and ready-made trap designs, please see the House Rules/Traps page.

Unless a trap is using extremely sophisticated or expensive materials, it won't count toward your monthly Resource spends.

NOTE: If you intend to set up long-term/permanent traps, please send in a +request to staff. Staff has final say on whether or not your suggested trap will be approved. All rolls for long-term trap creation MUST be done to a +job, and all long-term traps MUST be written as a staff-approved +note on a room you (or an amenable player) own.

Mundane Traps

A mundane trap is, as one may have guessed, a non-magical, totally ordinary sort of trap just out to do its job with a minimum of fuss.

Trap Mechanics Cheat Sheet
Detecting a trap Roll Wits + Composure - trapmaker's Stealth successes
Studying a trap Roll Intelligence/Wits + Investigation with any applicable specialties. Survival may also be used.
Disarming a trap Varies. May include Dexterity + Larceny or Dexterity + Crafts rolls, among others.
Creating a Trap Roll extended Dexterity + Crafts or Dexterity + Survival according to the nature of the trap.
Simple trap: 5 successes
Middling trap: 10 successes
Complex trap: 15 successes
Concealing a Trap Roll Dexterity + Stealth and note successes. These are deducted from searchers' rolls to locate it.

Trap Anatomy

All traps require the same three things to be defined: their trigger, their effects, and how to disarm them.

Trigger
Ex: tripwire, pressure plate, concealed hole, light beam interruption, manual activation

How does your trap know when it should go off?

The examples above are the most common, but you are welcome to get creative.

Creating a trap with improvised tools incurs a -2 penalty on each roll.

Effect
Ex: giant rolling ball of doom, swinging scythe, pitfall (stationary spikes), poisonous gas, explosion, poisoned needle, entangling, net-swoop

What happens when your trap DOES go off?

These effects can deal Bashing, Lethal or Aggravated damage, depending upon exactly what you choose during creation. All weapons and weapon-like attacks, however, must do Lethal or above, per GMC rulings.

Disarming Mechanism
Ex: breaking the needle in the keyhole, placing an equally heavy object on a pressure plate

Frankly, in a lot of cases, simply knowing what the trap is and how to avoid it is better than trying to disarm it. If you can spot the trip wire ahead of time, you can trigger the poisoned hail of needles BEFORE you go through the hallway and possibly need to make a hasty, less careful escape.


Magical Traps

A magical trap is, therefore, a trap which has either one or all of its components replaced by magic of some variety. Given that our game is Changeling only in terms of player supernaturals, staff expects creative use of goblin fruit, tokens and hedgespun to be the most likely options here.

Magical traps require the same three basic components as their mundane counterparts: trigger, effect, disarming mechanism.

NOTE: All magical traps require staff pre-approval unless they are derived directly from the list in House Rules/Traps.

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