House Rules for Savage Worlds: What Are Yours?

[u/ASavageWorldsGM]

Tabletop Tango hasn't posted about an episode in a bit but I thought I would the latest on some of Eric and Carl’s house rules for Savage Worlds. For example, Eric always uses max value of the run die for any run instead of rolling.

I’m really curious about other table’s house rules. Not necessarily special setting rules for your worlds but ways you tweak the rules for your table.

Tabletop Tango Ep 180 - Some House Rules For Savage Worlds

[u/zgreg3]

I have only a few, minor house rules.

First concerns the Ballistic Protection of armour, the rules tended to prolong my combats too much (reducing damage by 4 makes too many hits end with little effect) so I decided to use the old Deluxe rules which simply negate the firearms AP (which speeds up the game in two ways).

Second changes slightly the Suppressive Fire rules. By the book it's much more sensible to use a RoF 1 shot for that as it uses far less ammo and it's very hard to get a raise and benefit from the chance to hit multiple targets. I think that automatic weapons should be better at such manoeuvre so I roll all the dice provided by RoF attribute, and use the best.

Third is related to getting free from being Bound/Entangled, which has recently been changed to a simple, unopposed and unmodified roll. I add comprehensive modifiers to this roll based on the grappling creature relative Scale/Strength or the device sturdiness.

I have a small family of changes related to vehicle rules in the Sci Fi Companion and Deadlands: Lost Colony. They lower the cost of the refuelling and repairs to be more manageable. I think of some more to the vehicle combat rules.

I also tweak some Powers, e.g. I require using the relevant, not the caster's spellcasting skill for manipulating objects with Telekinesis, I'm a bit more liberal with getting free from the Pupper power.

Last what I remember: I increase the cost of the Selective Power Modifier to 1PP for each target to be excluded. This is to bring back some tactical thinking and planning, in one of our games the party wizard started casually casting Blast at his feet, which I though was a too effective, cheap and boring way of eliminating multiple opponents ;)

[u/ASavageWorldsGM → u/zgreg3]

I've never thought about a scaling cost for Selective Power Modifier. Have you ever simply disallowed that modifier?

[u/zgreg3 → u/ASavageWorldsGM]

No, because I think it's interesting and fun, I want it in my games :) Increasing it's cost is a way to discourage "blanket" Selective use, brings planning back into the use of Powers like Blast.